Sunday 26 September 2010

The hours before dawn




I creep to bed in the early hours, the next chapter finally written. I undress quietly in the bathroom, move silently to open the bedroom door. The bedside light is on but you’re asleep already, wearing a ‘sleep mask’ – by any other name, a blindfold. The room is warm and somehow, somewhen, you’ve kicked off the duvet. I admire your body; not the conventional beauty of rounded breasts and shapely thighs, but the flaws and scars of a life lived against the odds.

Gently, softly, I pad around the bed and settle feather-like on my side, the left-hand side, stretch out an inch away from you. I feel the heat from your body. You stir, one buttock brushing gently against my… That slight contact, unconscious, unexpected, suddenly excites me. Then you roll onto your back, kicking out your legs, pushing them against mine.

I remember you in this position, legs wide, waiting for me. That time you were tied down, wrists and ankles roped to the corners of the bed. Are you dreaming of this now?

Slowly, stealthily I change position. I hold myself above you, on my elbows, your even breaths washing my face. Don’t you feel me pressing against you, massaging your labia wider to accept me?

You grind your teeth and mumble something. Have I woken you?

No, I think not, though you thrust back at me. And moan with quiet inarticulate dreaming.

Little by little, in time with your breathing, I steal your sex. Thief in the night, silently plundering your body for my gratification. I wonder if, maybe, at the end you wake suddenly to find your body glowing with pleasure, luminous in the darkness behind the sleep-mask.

I stay posed, statue-still, muscles locked, feeling the tremble in your belly and thighs until you sigh and shift your hips to curl up under me.

***

I wake early, in blackness. Remove the sleep-mask to see a single shaft of light squeeze through the curtains and take flight across the bed. I lay still, remembering my dream. Listening to you breathe easily beside me. Watching the light roll across your thighs, because in the heat of the night we have somehow kicked the duvet away.

Your erection is: endearing, impressive, delicious. At one time I’d have said alarming. Are you dreaming of me, or of some complicated scenario like the one we played out last week?

I’m feeling wicked. I curl up against the sheets, closer to you. So close my hair falls over your belly. You stir and stretch as if it tickles. Your erection wobbles from side to side, lithe like a snake sensing the air with its tongue.

I lick my lips and take it in my mouth. It tastes sweet. It tastes of me.

I lick me off you, gratified at the swell of your response and the little shudder of your hips. You push up, questing, looking for sweeter, tighter, more enveloping pressure. I apply it with my lips and tongue, hear you gasp sleepless in your sleep. And with careful, deliberate moves I spin and twist onto you, astride your hips, giving myself to you and taking from you at the same time.

I arch my spine flex my thighs moving on your shaft letting it find its way letting it flower inside me. That’s good that’s deep I feel I feel you fill me up the sex swells in me intumescent and hot like a volcanic…

… eruption.

Afterwards I lean forwards, nipples brushing your chest my hair on your shoulder and you stir sleepily put your hand on my thigh as if to reassure me.

And I steal away to the morning, to shower and coffee and office, thinking smugly about that private moment and leaving you to wonder if it was a dream.

8 comments:

  1. *sigh* Lovely!
    Weekend lie-ins mean such a lot to me nowadays. The luxury of waking up quietly, without an alarm, next to a sleeping lover...

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  2. I admire your body; not the conventional beauty of rounded breasts and shapely thighs, but the flaws and scars of a life lived against the odds.

    This story is full of lovely passages; this is one of my favorites.

    Thank you for your comment on my blog. I hadn't visited my site for weeks. Finding your dark thumbnail vignettes of Prague was a delicious surprise.

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  3. Thank you for the comment! I do get bored with all the 'conventional' beauty one finds in erotica; most of us have scars, whether on the outside or the inside, and they're part and parcel of life and need to be acknowledged.

    As for the Prague thing - the city is full of little gems, like Kafka's house and some of the Jewish quarter, and then strangenesses like the town hall clock (the king, I think it was, didn't want the clockmaker to make another and possibly better one so had his eyes put out as a reward). And of course the hotel receptionist I described. The hotel is still there, so presumably he didn't blow it up... what happened to him might be another question, though.

    One other thing I didn't mention was how, walking around with a guidebook, we noticed how for each of the main public buildings it unfailingly mentioned how many people had been murdered by being thrown out of high windows - and there are white crosses on the cobbles outside the buildings in their memory.

    The story I wrote after my last trip was published in a now-extinct goth magazine; I might resubmit somewhere, sometime, or possibly just post it here.

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  4. I hope you do publish that story again. I'd love to read it. Wouldn't it be interesting to have an anthology of reprints of erotica from small presses and underground magazines from the days when people were devoting so much effort to crafting them? I had a few short stories published in some print magazines in the late '90's. Most of them never made it past three or four issues, but they featured some bizarre and lovely stuff. It would be cool to honor the effort that those publishers and authors put into that work.

    Any references you could suggest on adrenal fatigue would be appreciated. I'm not a hypochondriac by any means, but those symptoms have haunted me for years. Please feel free to email me, if you like.

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  5. Gawd, this is lovely! I read it when it first came out, and apparently the web-gremlins (or my own absentmindedness) ate up my comment. But still - lovely!

    ps - very very late but finally delivered, the story based on your contest entry in April!

    A Raw Onion, A Book, and a Green and Purple Dream ~ http://bit.ly/bHAiKx

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  6. Anne - I'll check duotrope and see if it's worth resubmitting that story somewhere; if not I'll put it on here. And you're right, a collection of pieces originally from underground mags would be cool, and very easy to do especially as an online publication if authors have still got republication rights or if rights have reverted. Realistically that should be the case anyway if the original publications folded, whatever they signed at the time.

    As to adrenal fatigue - my partner's away for a couple of days and she has the info. I'll get back to you at the end of the week, otherwise remind me!

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  7. Madeline - good to see you're back in circulation! I just read your short story on your page and left a comment there. It's cool.

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