Silent-Night

This is an unashamedly romantic tale for Christmas, it skips time between the present and their first Christmas when they each gifted themselves to the other.

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Silent night, holy night,

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin mother and Child…

'I'm sure you all know this one, please join in with the choir.' The Priest was almost pleading with the elderly congregation, his despair of ever raising a noise from the parishioners equal to the celebration of the birth of the infant Jesus clung audibly to his words; the loudest noise they'd made between them thus far was the shuffling of feet on cold stone flags, and a good few coughs and wheezes and I wondered what I was doing in a church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve instead of being in the pub with the rest of the gang. Actually, I knew only too well what I was doing at the church; there was this girl…

She'd never struck me as the church mouse type. We were kind of dating; that is I told everyone we were dating and she seemed to be doing her level best to steer clear of any kind of entanglement with me… most of the time. On the few occasions when she actually let me walk her home, she seemed quite keen. Didn't object to kissing, in fact she kissed like an angel, soft plying kisses that built from shy exploratory affection to an almost animalistic urgency until she pulled herself away, leaving both of us breathless with excitement and unfulfilled anticipation, then she'd leave me at the garden gate, not promising anything, not agreeing to see me again, not with words… but her eyes and the lingering touch of her fingers in my hand, and the scent of her in the stillness of the night air, held a promise that anything was possible. We'd been behaving like this for six months, not quite a couple, not quite dating, dancing with inevitability.

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"Dad!"

"Oh not again! Whose turn is it?"

She turned her head and smiled at me from where she was making sausage rolls on the kitchen worktop, her smile never failed to ignite me, things had always been that way between us, from the very beginning we'd taken our pleasure in the simple honest enjoyment of one another. I rose from the tableside chair where I was putting the finishing touches to the dolls house I'd been making for our twin girls.

"I'll never get it finished at this rate." I complained half-heartedly.

"Go, before one of them comes in here and spoils the surprise."

She glanced across her shoulder at me as I came back into the kitchen a few minutes later.

"What did they want this time?"

I eased behind her, wriggling against her backside and scooping my hand in a deft movement under her cashmere jumper cupping her breast; she bent her head back shivering with anticipation letting me nuzzle at her neck. I'd been reading Christmas carol's to the girls instead of their usual bedtime story.

"It was a technical question," I whispered against her skin, "they wanted to know if tomorrow is Christmas Day and the next day is Boxing Day, when is the Feast of Stephen and will it be snowing."

"Mmm… What did you tell them?"

"I told them it was another name for Boxing Day and that King Wencelas lived in Bohemia in the 10C where they always have snow at Christmas. I didn't elude to the fact that the carol it was composed by an Englishman in the 19C and set to a 300 year old Finnish folk tune."

"Good… I think that might have confused them, or at the very least delayed you from doing what you're doing now."

What I was doing was teasing her nipple, feeling it stiffen, listening to her breath catch as my nail grazed across erect bunched nerve ends, she began to slowly gyrate her bottom against the growing swell in my trousers, and we stayed, enjoying the crude sexual teasing, each knowing this to be an aperitif, a foretaste of what might be on offer.

"Later my love," she said, having established her ability to arose my ardour, pushing me away with her bottom, "pour me more of that mulled wine. You finish that dolls house and let me finish these, and then I might just have a surprise for you - if those two let us."

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I'm in the pub, waiting. It's noisy, boisterous, smoke, booze and raucous Christmas carol's, that's what we called entertainment in our corner of southeast London. I wasn't sure she was going to put in an appearance, she'd been cagey, didn't want me to call round at her house for her, said her Mum wouldn't like it. Didn't want me to meet her anywhere. I'd bought her a Christmas present and as the clock chimed ten-thirty I wasn't sure I was going to need it, it wasn't much, just a scarf, but it was a good one, my sister helped me choose it. I'd given up hope she might arrive, no longer watching the door but the antics of the Rugby crowd across the room when her perfume cut through the acrid reek of the lounge bar and teased at my nostrils.

"Hello," she said, "do you want to go proper carol singing?"

I tried to keep the surprise from my face when she told me we were going to church; I hadn't been to church since I entered my teens, a lifetime ago - well, seven years, I wondered if my membership had expired. I didn't really know what to say and walked with her the mile or so to the church, happy when she slid her arm through mine and let me hug her close to ward off the cold. Snow was forecast.

The church is tiny, walls of Kentish flint set in a graveyard hedged with yew and holly. From a stubby tower bells peal calling parishioners for the special Christmas service. Candle lanterns lit the porch entrance to the church, their flickering light reflecting off the frost glazed path, I've seen the church before, passed it often, but never like this. One might call it a romantic setting; it oozed the spirit of Christmas, not the commercial ambiguity of Christmas.

Legend tells of how Silent Night came to be written by Josef Mohr in Oberndorf, Austria as a Christmas song after he discovered mice had eaten through the works of the church organ, but the discovery of Franz Gruber's score composed four years later cast doubt on the legend; not that the parishioners cared on that night, nor me, or her, we intoned the seasonal words barely conscious of their message or the idiotic rhymes of John Young's translation - child / mild, afar / Alleluia!

I sang with gusto, heads turned, she glanced, eyes wide in mock surprise and smiled the smile to melt a thousand winters. And when the service was over and we joined the queue of couples at the door to receive the Priests good wishes for the festive season, he took my hand in both of his and looked deep into my soul, 'Look after him Miriam,' he said, 'he has a good strong voice, we could do with him here on a regular basis.'

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"Do you remember," Miriam asked, "the first Christmas Eve we spent together?"

We both knew her question to be rhetorical, just an opening gambit in a game that might take us well past Santa's scheduled visiting time. We were stretched out on the sofa, Miriam sitting between my legs, leaning back onto my chest. We'd eaten a late supper, her wonderful garlicky sausage rolls straight from the oven, mince pies and more mulled wine - we'd probably both had more to drink than we ought given the twins were unlikely to sleep much beyond five o'clock. They were four years old and this year they really understood the whole Christmas event. For them the essence of the thing came down to the giving of presents, one couldn't escape it - not even in a four year old, the commercialism of the weeks (and months) leading into the so called festive season swamped for most people any religious empathy they might want to entertain; though Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, would always hold a special significance for Miriam and for me.

It sounds smug to say that we are blissfully happy, but I can't deny the fact, we share a mutual contentment, our lives and our careers had worked out better than either of us had a right to expect and we'd found in each other the perfect partner whose aspirations, in everything, are as much for our partner as they are for ourselves. It's wrong to say we owe everything to that one night but… I glanced at the clock, it started almost exactly eight years ago.

"Remind me." I teased. "What happened?"

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There are snowflakes falling, huge flakes, goose down flakes slip sliding through the blackness and silently carpeting hallowed ground marked by a trail of footsteps leading from the porch to the wooden gate in the hedge.

"Come on." She said grabbing my hand and pulling me off the path into the virgin snow smothering the graveyard, "Let's go this way."

We stepped off the path, I could hear the snow crunch beneath our feet as she led me around the corner of the church out of sight of anyone who might care to glance back, there was little chance of being seen, folk are too wary of slipping on the snow and are concentrating on their own passage unaware that we have taken our first step on our own very personal rite of passage.

Just around the corner of the church she slipped on snow-covered ice where water dripping from a gutter had frozen on the ground, I caught her, breaking her fall, lowering her onto the snow, tumbling as my feet shot from under me and falling ungainly to lie sprawled across her body, a tangle of limbs, embarrassed hand pressing at unfamiliar swelling as we sought to disengage from a proximity that caught us unprepared.

"Are you ok?" I enquired, from my knees alongside her.

"Yes. Help me up."

I took her arm and balanced her as she sat up and knelt facing me snow in her hair and across the shoulders of her coat. I reached to brush the snow from her hair and only succeeded in shaking snowflakes down her back; she stifled a shriek conscious of people still leaving the church. I don't know why, maybe to silence her, but I leant forward and kissed her, she hesitated momentarily then leaned into me, first with her lips, then her arms up onto my shoulders and my hands found her body, pulling her onto me and we knelt in the snow and in the snow fall joined from knee to lip and found unfamiliar curves that moments before had shrunk from contact and now sought ways to press and rub all-the-while pretending their pressing and their rubbing was accidental not intent and we each silently tested the new found limits of trust. From within the church, a carol played over the speaker system:

Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by

Yet in the dark streets shineth, the everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

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"How can you remember that? How can you remember what carol was playing?"

"Miriam I can remember every detail of that night as if it were last night."

"I can only remember kissing you, silently screaming for you to touch me. I remember your arms around me, you had a hand almost on my bottom, and I was willing your hand lower, wanting you to touch me so much. I could feel your prick against my stomach, it felt gigantic, and I wanted to see it, I wanted to touch it, wanted it to touch me. I could feel the heat of you even through our clothes and I imagined your prick burning hot, touching my skin, branding me while I lay naked on the snow. You could have undressed me then, taken me, I would have happily stained the snow with my virgin blood and I wouldn't have cared, I just wanted to feel you move inside me."

"I was scared."

"I know. You were the sensible one."

We lay listening to the King's College carol service on the radio, each lost in thought, almost absentmindedly caressing one another, intimacy suspended temporarily by familiarity, awaiting the one or the other to take the lead and seek a response that will build into a sensation, then an urge, then a desire until sexual passion took up the driving seat… 'The Rector Phillip Brookes of Philadelphia!' we exclaimed together in fits of laughter as the radio began to play 'O Little Town of Bethleham'. How weird is that! It is a game we play - naming the writers of popular songs, we found our professional niche researching and writing histories of folk songs. Last Christmas we published a book on the history of Christmas Carols, somehow it seemed the least we could do.

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When we broke from that kneeling kiss in the church grounds we both instinctively knew our relationship had changed, we'd moved from curiosity and uncertainty to desire… and uncertainty; you can't shake off the uncertainty, not with a kiss, not when your bodies meld to the kiss and promise more than you've yet discovered, more than you can imagine possible, not when the only thing you've seen is pictures and the only thing you've cum on is photo print or tissues and you've never touched the lips of a woman or drawn the moisture from between her legs with your finger or your tongue or your prick and the only scent you know is the scent she applies… and not the scent she exudes, will exude, coating you, sending you delirious, greedy for more.

She drew me down into the graveyard away from any possibility of being seen by anyone leaving the church, behind a yew hedge that swept like coat tails to the floor, a scalloped recess to one side, an overhang of tight matted growth sheltering the ground. We snuggled back against the hedge and watched the snow fall against a backlit sky, heavy now, already vanishing our tell-tale footprints though it couldn't mask the excitement we each felt at being on the precipice of discovery or the games our fingers played stroking hands and wrists, prying to where warm skin lay hidden, and eventually she turned into me and the kissing began again only this time there was a frantic undoing of coat buttons and she sat in my lap, her lips on mine, duelling tongues, and our hands sought skin under jumpers under shirts and her body shook as she gasped into my mouth as I touched her skin and drew my fingers across her tummy, under her breasts, tracing the lower laced edge of her bra, the swell of her breast grazing my finger, and she shifted lowering her breast to my hand, cupping her, almost cumming in my trousers as she pressed against me trapping her breast against my hand against my chest. We stayed as if fused, neither capable of moving, lacking the language to admit what we are doing, what we wanted next, neither of us knowing how to ask in word or deed for more than is being offered, and equally afraid to offend by withdrawing in case the gesture is misread and these first urgent explorations fade into memory. The cold and a gust of wind that blows snow into our hideaway rescues us, re-arranging our clothing becomes a necessity.

We walk to her house through ankle deep snow, kicking at small drifts forming tongues across pavements and into the roadway, feet cold and wet, heads and hearts blazing oblivious to anything but wanting to touch, to kiss, to taste, and at her gate we linger and hug and whisper endearments and finally she asks if I'd like to 'go in', her Mum and Dad are away, at her Aunt's for Christmas; Miriam stayed over for the dog, was supposed to drive down on Christmas morning, but that would be impossible now, with the snow already drifting to block roads. Inside her parents house everything is different, it's their world that shines back under harsh electric light, not our secret dark snow filled world and a edginess fills both of us as if we expect her parents to walk into the room. I sit patiently looking around the room while she makes hot chocolate, feet freezing, shivering slightly. Familiarizing myself with family portraits, Miriam displayed from baby to woman.

"Christ! Your lips are blue." Miriam says entering the room carrying two steaming mugs.

"I'm cold." I stutter, and she drags me upstairs insisting I take a shower, while she finds some dry clothes.

I sit on the edge of her bed, clutching my mug of chocolate, a fan heater warming the barely lit bedroom, feet encased in her Fathers socks and slippers, his dressing gown wrapped around me.

"This is surreal," I say, "I never imagined I'd be in your bedroom in a thousand years."

"Really? If that is true I think I might have grounds for disappointment!"

It was a silly way to begin over, but we didn't know any other and we teased each other and drank our chocolate and moved closer together until eventually we lay on the bed and she whispered what she imagined might happen between us in her bedroom, of a glimpsed image snatched from a magazine being noisily laughed over by the girls at College of a man with his tongue buried in a girls sex and the look of ecstasy on the girls face, which even though Miriam knew to be faked, must have foundation in truth. For two years this image filled her imagination, fed her desires, and now…

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We've been undressing one another while we talk, and now, like then, she's shaking as I move slowly down her body. Already I can smell the essence of her, and just like then, I know she'll be wet, that the lips of her sex will be oozing a thick secretion forming like pearl drops along the wrinkled undulations of barely concealed skin; with Miriam anticipation is half of the pleasure, she likes to be coaxed, likes to spend all day pretending it may not happen until finally her desire and her lust and her wild imagining of bodies and tongues and fingers moving in unison out of control overwhelms her and, just like then, she will need to be touched, need to be caressed, and long to be filled.

She turned the light beside her bed off, then moments later turned it on again, "I want to watch you," she told me, "I want to watch your expression when you see me for the first time. I want to watch what you do to me."

I remember her panties even now, tight fitting white with broderie anglaise panels each side of a pubis that rose like a sculpted hill from the plain of her tummy. She let me take off her panties, almost reluctantly, legs lightly squeezed together, and I could sense her fight the desire and fear while I scooped her still warm sex filled panties from her feet and cupped them in my hands my fingers finding her damp betrayal in the crotch lining, then finally, battle won, she splayed her legs apart briefly turning her head to face the wall as if to mask her brazenness and I bent forward and I kissed along her thigh feeling her quiver with each kiss moving closer until I could feel the heat of her cunt on my cheek and my lips and her fingers tangling in my hair guiding me as she raised her hips off the bed to join my mouth to the stained lips of her sex. I was overwhelmed. The scent and the taste and the texture of rippled flesh and honey laden hair and the sweet tang when my tongue wormed between the folds she parted with urgent fingers and drew upon unsullied flesh ripened in longing, aching to be riven, impaling herself on my tongue, holding my head while the orgasm she'd craved tore through her body and the sound of her crying out and thrashing against my mouth set off my own orgasm. I sprayed across her knee and thigh with a suddenness that surprised both of us and brought Miriam wide eyed from her reverie, pushing my face from between her legs, bending forward to see my still erect prick drip semen onto the bed. She scoots forward, glances up as if to challenge me to stop her, and takes my prick into her mouth.

She gurgles, a deep throaty tremble as her tongue works against my flesh and she slides her mouth slowly up and down my prick. I'm crouched, leaning over her head, one hand on her back feeling her body rocking against my prick in her mouth and my other hand finds her breast, a buttoned nipple stiff against my finger tips, Miriam rubbing her cunt against me where I kneel, I'm almost falling onto her, the sensation of her mouth milking me, and I'm going to cum and move to pull out of her mouth and I watch in disbelief as my prick squirts across her face. She gasps with surprise at the hot splash against her cheek, and growls, and takes me back inside her mouth.