" over and over again.
At 1:00, he was awakened by a soft hand stroking his stomach and a warm body pressed against him. A tongue nuzzled his ear. He rolled over to be suffocated by a hungry mouth, and reached out to find her soft puppy fat eager for his touch. The sweats disappeared; two bodies began a dialogue in the soft glow of the early afternoon on an old fashioned four poster bed surrounded by antique furniture and lace curtains.
They turned, and as he savored the salty sweetness of her dark flecked valley, soft lips and a velvet tongue sought for his solid passion. His fingers clenched her bottom hard and her nails dug into his hips. Before they reached the summit of their longing, he withdrew, arranged her on her back, and mounted her, starting thrusting slowly, while she wrapped her legs around his midsection. The grandfather clock downstairs maintained its sentinel measure of time, but it was unheard as two lovers lost themselves in one another.
Streaked with sweat, they lay in each other's arms, resting after their dialogue, exhausted by their journey through clouds and rain. "Chris, what's your work schedule like the next couple of days?"
"I've got to do another double shift tonight, then single shifts the next three days."
She frowned . "I've got to go back to New York tonight. Need to spend a couple days in the office." Her finger started tracing his arm and she looked down. "Was hoping you could come with me."
He kissed her. "I'd like to, but I can't. Gotta work for a living, babe. Need to do some yard work from your Grandmother. Keep an eye on Virgil and Freddie, make sure they don't kill themselves tearing apart the house."
Her eyes bore on his. "You're a writer now, Chris. You need to think about life beyond the convenience store and yardwork. You need to think of a new place to live, space to write your stories, space to write books. Space for people who care about you."
He started to speak, but she put a single finger on his lips. "You say your house is being torn up by your brothers. It'll take them a while to finish what they're doing, won't it? It'll be noisy and dirty and nasty, won't it?" He nodded. "Bring your clothes and your laptop over here for a few days. Take the stories you put on the Internet and rewrite them, fill them out a bit and make the characters people we'd like to know. Or elves or dwarves or whatever. I'll draw up another contract in New York and you'll be able to quit the store and wind down your lawn business." He frowned and thought; she kissed his forehead. "Chris, I'm not asking you to make the great leap now. Just try out a new lifestyle for a few days and see how you like it. You can take the back guest room: it's away from the street and it's the quietest room in the house."
"What–what–what will your grandmother say?"
"Mutti won't mind; I asked her about it this morning." Chris' jaw dropped. "So it's settled. Get your stuff together and move in–for a few days."
She traced the line of his jaw with her index finger while he thought about it, and eventually he nodded in agreement. "Good," she said, sitting up quickly enough to make her breasts wobble. Reaching her hand over, she stroked him and smiled. Her fuzzy black hair was tousled and a few strands escaped the pony tail she wore that day. "We have time to celebrate before we have to go." As his manhood reasserted itself, she bent down to kiss it again, her soft tongue questing every curve until it was fully restored, then she sat on it, welcoming into her velvet vise and rocking gently on him.
During a slow part of his shift, he put his laptop on the counter and checked his e-mail for the first time that day. He'd barely had time to shower, gather a few things, and make it on time for work. His co-worker Frieda gave his a quizzical look and a smile, shaking her head, but said nothing. There was a message from Germany:
Chris,
We've had such a good time in the Schwartzwald! It's been a long time, but I think I'm
finally back in shape; Magda has been wearing me out. Yesterday we took a lovely boat trip on the Rhine. Tomorrow we're making a long trip to spend a week with my father's relatives near Dresden, and visit some old villages just over the border in Poland where our ancestors lived.
I'm glad you're having such a good time with Angela. It takes a great burden off my
mind. Please stay at my house while your brothers remodel; you need some quiet space. Have as much fun as possible, and I'll treat you both to something nice when I get back.
Love, Anna
There were pictures attached, and a second e-mail with more. Most of them were forest shots of stately trees and a few of a boat trip on the Rhine. The last ones were of Anna naked: several where she was sitting in the middle of a small waterfall, and in the last one she was peeking from behind a small tree, her breasts resting on a pair of strategic branches, a silly smile on her face. Chris shook his head as he closed the window; he was seeing a side of her he'd never seen before. I didn't fit with the storm trooper of the old days.
The old house was silent as he returned, lugging his bags through the front door, and he spent several moments looking around the living room after he put his things away upstairs. Anna was all around him: in the furniture still in the same place they shared lemonade and she offered him her white melons not that long ago, in the pictures of her family all around, in the books of indeterminate age resting on worn shelves, in the degrees hanging on the walls he hadn't noticed before.
Before he went to bed, he opened his laptop and looked at her pictures still attached to the e-mails: taking a flash drive, he downloaded them for later scrutiny. A storm blew in from the Plains in the wee hours, and his thoughts flickered back and forth between the women in his life.
The next three days were a blur: wakening in the early light, a quick breakfast at his home where he checked in with his brothers, a morning at his laptop immersed in old stories, a late afternoon and evening behind the counter. Angela sent him updates of her meetings in New York and asked him when he was quitting the convenience store. Anna sent him more pictures of her travels in Germany, which always included a picture of her naked or preparing to enthusiastically devour huge sausage swathed in mustard.
He dared not quit his jobs. The tension in his relationships with the two women was making him nervous, a tension only banished when he was lost in a story. His fear was he would lose both of them, and life would be back to its normal solitude. Chris firmly believed in the old Wing Walker's Maxim: don't let go of something until you have hold of something else.
Saturday morning found him awakening later than usual with a stranger at his computer. Angela was sitting at his laptop reading one of his text files. She sat with her knees drawn up toward her chest; which gave him an excellent side view of her breast as her white halter top hung loosely. For a moment, his mind spun, thinking she would be reading his e-mail, but it became clear she was reviewing a story.
"Good morning, sunshine," she said calmly, not looking up from the screen. "Busy the past few days?"
"Yeah. Got a lot of things written. You?"
"It was insane. Had to let go of a couple of vice presidents and a couple of editors. I never like this part of the job, but they were leaking data to the competition. Gotta go back at the end of next week to hire replacements."
"When didya get in?"
"Fifteen minutes ago. You were dead to the world, so I thought I'd see what you were up to. This is good stuff: I knew you were a quality writer."
"Thanks." He sat up heavily and rubbed his eyes. "Fancy some breakfast?"
"Great idea. I gotta run by Watson Library to check up a couple things. Mind tagging along?" He shook his head, and she looked at her watch. "Sounds like a plan. Let's go."
They rode their bicycles downtown and had croissants and coffee at a little place on Massachusetts street, taking their time and people watching as they nibbled their food and read the newspaper. By the time they reached campus, it was just past noon and Watson had barely opened its doors. Anjie led them up to the Eastern European reference area and checked some catalogs in Polish before heading into the stacks.
Arriving at their goal at the end of a long stack, she reached down to pull an old book off the shelf, flipping the pages. Chris looked around at the incomprehensible titles before looking over her shoulder. "How many languages do you speak?" he murmured in her ear.
"Eight," she whispered back. "Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greek, Czech, and Polish."
"That's seven."
"Oh, and English," she giggled. "You?"
"I survived your grandmother's German class, and that's about it. Unless you count Redneck as another language."
She wiggled her backside against his groin. "There's another language I think you do quite well."
He responded by circling her waist, hugging back to him. The response below his belt was immediate, and probed her bottom urgently. It wiggled against him more and he lifted his hands to cup her halter. A sigh and a gasp; his tongue emerged to trace her earlobe. She put the book down on top of the others, open, and put her hands on the stack to steady herself. All was quiet around them; they were alone in the entire wing of the library.
She reached around to undo his fly, and he undid hers to slip her shorts and panties down. Bending over at the waist, she reached between her legs to find him and guide him to the moist canyon that longed for his touch. His hands moved fabric aside, and his fingers stroked her bare nipples as they moved together. She turned her head and his tongue returned to the delicately scalloped lobe. It wasn't long before she gasped and shuddered, and together they reached their goal of jubilation.
