Color me crazy, but I think I might have stumbled into a mature sexual relationship.
I didn’t feel weird around Monroe. I felt great. Energized, relaxed, confident. I even danced around the cabin in my underwear. And even better, Monroe did not seem weird. It felt perfectly fine to get up in the dark cabin, slip back into my clothes, give him a peck on the lips, and go home at the end of the night.
He usually found me sitting on my porch in the mornings,
working on a manuscript I was thinking of calling Divided Property. We talked about what we were planning on writing that morning. And then he kissed me on the top of the head and told me to behave myself. I would say that was unfair, but my last writing project did end up being re-enacted on YouTube, so draw your own conclusions.
We were still friends. Friends with benefits. Yay.
I didn’t need him. I didn’t depend on him for money or social standing. I just liked having him around. Monroe didn’t care who my daddy was, or who I was married to, or how I could help him. He just liked me and he really enjoyed having sex with me, which considering how my last relationship went, was reassuring.
And when we did have sex… Wow. That’s all I’m saying. No, that’s not all I’m saying. When I was married, sex was just something we did on Wednesdays and Saturdays. It wasn’t something I looked forward to, and afterward I didn’t feel much better. I finally understood that my sex problems were not the result of me being frigid or inadequate or not knowing what the hell I was doing. And maybe it wasn’t even Mike’s fault. I was going to go ahead and blame Mike anyway, but it was much more likely that the two of us were just sexually incompatible. We didn’t listen to each other. Neither of us knew what the other wanted. We were like two magnets with negative charges, whenever we tried to get together - well, the bottom line was repulsion.
Monroe didn’t care whether I’d showered. He didn’t care what time it was or whether he had something else he should be doing. He made me laugh before, during, and after. And it felt good. It made me feel good.
Nothing was expected. If we ate dinner together, great. If we didn’t, okay. If we hung out together, but didn’t have sex, it wasn’t the end of the world. There was no pouting, no hurt looks.
One afternoon I was curled up on the sofa, reading Drunk
Tank Duets. It was the kind of blustery afternoon you wanted to wallow in, to drink hot cocoa and wear fuzzy socks and do nothing but nap. I’d turned off anything that would make noise because I wanted to hear the patter of the rain on the roof.
There was a knock on my screen door. Monroe was standing outside, rain dripping from his hair and a smile stretched across his face. The afternoons were his usual writing time, so it was strange to see him out this early.
“You okay?” I asked, opening the door for him. “You’re going to freeze wandering around in the rain like that.”
He dug his fingers into my hair and dragged me against his cool, wet mouth. He tasted clean and spicy.
I dropped the book as he hitched my legs up over his hips and carried me, albeit slowly, into my room. I pushed his sodden jacket back over his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. His shirt followed just before he dropped me on the bed with a playful little bounce. It was at that moment I realized I was wearing my pajama pants with the little candy corns on them. And I just didn’t care.
I reached for his belt buckle, but he pushed me back on the bed and stretched over me, pressing me into the old mattress. “Slow down. We’re not in a hurry. We have all day.”
This was different. This was slow, no urgency, no rush. Just the slip of skin against skin. Fingers brushing over my ankles. The curve of his smile against my belly as he peeled my shirt over my head. The good solid weight of him lying between my knees as he kissed my thighs and slipped on a condom.
I was warm and ready and when he was inside me, it felt so good I wanted to cry. He rolled over so that I straddled him, letting me ride him as my fingers intertwined with his. It was so odd to see this huge, “manly man” lying in the midst of my hot pink pillows. He released my hands to grip my hips and steady me.
I ground down, circling my hips in time with his thrusts. His breath quickened in his chest. He was close, holding on for me. He sat up, curving his hands up my waist and around my breasts. The clench of his teeth around my nipple sent me flying, a rainbow of colors exploding in my head as I quaked over him.
At the first shudder, he groaned into my mouth and toppled over the edge after me. I collapsed in a sweaty heap on his chest.
He cupped his hand around my jaw, pushed my hair out of my face, and kissed me. I rolled on my side, my arm slung over his chest. “So you will pretty much use any excuse not to work, huh?”
“Well, yes,” he said, scooching down so we were eye-to-eye. “But that’s not why I came over. I came over because when a guy has someone like you in his life and there’s the opportunity to make love to her on a rainy afternoon, he should do it.”
“If that’s a line from one of your books, I will kick your ass.” I promised him, stretching along the length of his body.
“No, but I really should write that down,” he said, looking on my nightstand for a pen and paper.
I slapped lazily at him as I wrapped my arm around his waist. Every muscle in my body was relaxed and well used. My head felt so heavy against his shoulder. I yawned and closed my eyes. And I don’t remember anything much after that.
When I woke, it was still raining, The quilt was draped across the small of my back as Monroe absently rubbed his hand along my spine. He was reading over my manuscript and making notes in the margins.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, still so heavy with sleep that all I wanted to do was close my eyes again. “How long have I been out?”
“A couple of hours. Go back to sleep,” he whispered, kissing my temple.
I laid my head back on the pillow and passed out again. When I came to, Monroe was sleeping beside me, his chin bucked over my shoulder, his hand flexed over my hip. It was very strange, sleeping with another man after so many years, to have some other person’s body sprawled next to mine. For one thing, Monroe snored, a light, buzzing rattle out of his throat that reminded me of a hibernating bear. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been touched in my sleep, held as if Monroe was afraid I would slip away while he dreamed.
I chuckled, rolling over to face him. I stroked a hand over his whiskers and he leaned into it, his eyes fluttering open. He grinned and kissed me.
“Hey.”
He pressed a hand to the base of my spine, pulling me close to him. “Hello there.”
“Sorry I fell asleep.”
He shrugged, tucking my face into his neck. “You haven’t slept a whole night since you got here. I figure you’re due.”
“So I wasn’t able to cover up that insomnia nearly as well as I’d hoped, huh?”
He rubbed his palms along my jaw, running his thumbs along my cheeks. “I used to see in your window sometimes, when I looked up from my computer screen. You’d be all curled up on the couch, trying so hard to sleep. You were brave and strong and … really, really pissed off. Which I like in a gal. You’d pace and you’d prowl until you’d pass out. And for a moment your face would be still and you looked happy. I lived for that. Even when I wanted you to disappear and leave me in peace, I lived for watching you finally find the quiet.”
“How closely were you watching me?”
“Pretty closely,” he admitted. “Well, you’re not hard to look at. Some perverse part of me wondered when you were going to break. But you never did. I think that’s when I realized, ‘That’s a person I want to get to know better.”
“You have strange standards for friendship,” I told him, rolling onto his chest. I sat up; the sheets fell away and puddled around my waist. When he reached up to curl the ends of my hair around his fingers, I smiled down at him.
“Oh, no.” He groaned.
“What?”
“That’s the look of a woman who just realized I am completely in her power,” he said.
“Really?” I arched my eyebrow in a sinister manner.
