Or perhaps not so odd, she thought, letting the armload of cut wood roll from her arms to clatter to the foot of the bare mountain ash that marked her husband’s grave.
The tree had grown to its full height in the years since her husband had died, its trunk as straight as his back when he had been indignant. The roots that had long since fingered inside his wooden coffin had pushed his tombstone off-kilter. The leaning, crumbling block of stone was fitting for his graveesomehow, for her husband who had been so immaculate in life. It was wrong for him in the way that death had been wrong for him. She reached up and ran her fingers over the mossy stone where the years of wind and snow and rain had smoothed away his name.
Her lips shaped it: Rowan.
A year’s worth of dried leaves and red berries not plucked by the birds cluttered the grave. She couldn’t bear to come the rest of the year, so it always was a mess when she arrived. She cleared the debris, baring cold dirt that crumbled between her fingers. Nothing else grew over his sleeping body but the tree, and never had. Perhaps it was the ash and soot from her yearly fire.
She laid out blankets to soften the ground next to the grave and stacked the wood on the bare dirt over it, using twigs from the mountain ash, from his tree, as kindling. She sparked a match off his stone and lit the fire.
The fire seemed as if it took a breath… His breath, she thought… and then flickered to life. The scent of wood smoke stoked a cocktail of abiding love and tingling desire in her belly. It spread in a wet sluice of heat straight to her pussy. She stared into the flames as she slid from her jacket, only blinking once as her fingers found the buttons of her blouse. They only had one night and she wasn’t about to waste a moment of it undressing.
She looked away from the flames as she fumbled with her belt and slid her pants down, cold air licking her bottom and cooling her damp folds. The fire heated her front and the heady scent of smoke heated her insides.
Ellowyn.
Soft enough she thought she imagined it.
She lifted her chin and her breath caught in her throat. Rowan’s shade flickered within the fire, wavering into shape, forming from the smoke and stepping clear of the flames. He was naked, as always, long muscles stretching and bunching under his otherworldly guise of skin. His thick cock was already hardening. At the sight of it, of him, tingles spilled from the crown of her head.
Her eyes widened and a smile spread across her lips. “Rowan!”
She stepped closer to him, but not all the way, letting him orchestrate their first touch. He knew when his ethereal form had taken on enough mass. He reached out to her cheek and her eyes closed at the feather-light stroke, like ash falling across her face. His touch solidified as his hand slid to the nape of her neck, drew her toward his body, and lowered his mouth to hers in a hungry kiss. Warmth swept through her and her arms went around his back, fingers caressing his hardening form, rediscovering him. The familiarity never went away, but she could explore his body for an eternity and never tire of him.
He slid his other arm tight around her waist, pinning her against his erection, and broke the kiss.
Ellowyn. He breathed her name into her soul. My love.
With her eyes closed, she could imagine he was here with her in flesh.
“ I love you,” she whispered.
She ran her hands over him, tipping her head back as he moved his lips to her throat. Chills ran through her at his delicate touch. His hands found the combs in her hair, diamond-laced trinkets he’d given her on their wedding day, and let her waves spill free to warm her back.
“I love you.”
She meant it as reassurance that she was pleased to be with him, desperate to make love with him this one cold night a year, even in an old, windswept graveyard. She slid down his body, kissing her way along his broad chest, teasing at his nipples, and running her mouth and fingertips over his stomach. As she knelt before him, the muscles in his thighs corded under her hands.
“ I love you.”
She kissed his thighs, his hip bones, circling his cock, teasing him but taunting herself even more. She wanted nothing more than to please him.
“ I love you.”
At last she licked the tip of his rampant cock. It twitched against her tongue and she smiled, sliding her lips over the head as slowly as she could. He held perfectly still and the breeze ceased caressing her skin, as if he’d commanded the entire world to stop in this moment. She sensed nothing but their mingling desire as his cock filled her mouth.
She pressed deeper, sliding her tongue along the smooth ridge underneath, stretching her lips to enclose it. Her pussy heated and dampened further, a trickle whispered down her thigh. Just the thought of him there, pushing between her folds…she moaned around him.
His fingers twined through her hair and he released a shivering sigh that sounded like a breath of wind through the leafless tree. Ellowyn.
She drew back and then took him back in again, harder. She had all night, true, but her cunt stung deeply with want. He would take her over and over this night, and she could barely wait for him to begin. Her breasts swung heavy and full, aching for his hands, the nipples tightening.
She sucked him deep, pressing against him so that he slid past her teeth and over her flexing tongue. She opened for him, body and soul, as he pushed still deeper. She forced herself to relax, breathe, and pumped her mouth over him as she reached up to cradle his balls on her palm. The first time was always the quickest. He shuddered and his grip on her hair pulled tight, hard as a flood of heat spilled down her throat.
She licked him, though there was no wetness, just heat when he came, and backed off to look up at him from her knees.
He knelt and gathered her close, crushing her against his chest, his mouth on hers in a deep kiss. Her arms went around her and he laid her down on the blankets so he could kneel over her. He started at her lips, licking and kissing, tugging on the bottom one with his teeth. Her fingers explored his chest, caressing the hard lines of his muscles, the shifting planes of his back, the soft places behind his ear and under his hair.
His lips moved to her throat, and she stretched her head back as he kissed her. His teeth found the tender skin under her jaw, biting with a stinging pinch. Fresh desire tumbled through her. She writhed and moaned, pushing his head lower. He went willingly, cupping her breasts in his hands as if testing the swollen weight of them, his thumbs playing her nipples. He looked up at her, his face soft, a small smile on his lips as he watched her writhe under his touch.
A sharp agony built between her legs. She panted, begging with her very breath. She was wet enough to take right now, but he had had his pleasure for the moment and intended to stretch hers out. She gasped a soft cry as he lowered his mouth to her nipple and teethed it, and then to the other. He worked them slowly, thoroughly, until she writhed in agony under him, pleading with him to move still lower.
He let his hands slide over her belly and hips and lower, cupping her folds with his palm but not intruding on the wet folds. She pushed against his grip, but she could only manage to rub the edges of her sopping lips against his fingers. Passion tripped along her every nerve, settling achingly in her cunt. Her swollen clit stung from want.
“Please, my love. Rowan… ah!”
He let a finger trail between her folds to land on her clit, and then his thumb joined it, gently twisting and working the swollen nub. Pleasure rocketed through her at the sensation and she rode the wave, letting herself slam into quick, blunt climax. He let her buck against his hand a little and then shifted, sliding his pale, ethereal knees between her legs to spread them further.
He captured her gaze with his, still grey and ghostly even in his solid form, and her lips parted without sound. There were no words needed between them, only a whole year of living in this one night, captured in a single glance. He pushed into her, slow and deep as if in discovery. Her legs came up around him, gripping his hips, and he began to thrust, long sweeps with his hips that drew his cock along every inch of her channel, so that the tip of his cock kissed her folds, and then stretched and filled her again, satisfying every bit of her long year of suffering need.
The pleasure consumed her, drawing her again and again, nearer and nearer to the abyss of rapture.
Ellowyn…
