“How can I ever repay you,” she asked.
“It’s my payment for dinner,” he said.
“Dinner was never this good,” she said. “I feel like I’m purring.”
He pressed his thumb into the muscles of her foot and she stiffened, then relaxed.
“A lot of tension in your feet,” he said.
“Who would ever have thought there was so much pleasure down there? Ohhhhh… How did you learn how to do this?”
“I’ve had a varied life.” Becker said. He ran his fingernails lightly across the smooth skin atop her foot. Karen gasped and tensed and relaxed and gasped again.
“That feels so good it almost hurts,” she said.
“It does get confusing.”
He worked on her feet for a long time, and after a while they stopped talking. Karen simply lay back, eyes closed, and moaned openly while Becker massaged and caressed in turn, patiently and thoroughly.
Eventually he relinquished her feet and ran his hand slowly up the underside of her calf.
“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.
Becker didn’t bother to answer. At the tender skin under her knee joint he smoothed his fingers like feathers and she gasped with pleasure.
He ran both hands halfway up her thigh, gripped firmly, then slowly and with some pressure pulled his hands down the length of her thigh, her calf, across the foot and all the way off the toes.
“My God.” Karen said. “Do you know what that feels like?”
“Yes,” Becker said. He did the same with the other leg.
“I feel that everywhere.” she said. “It may be better than sex.”
“It is sex,” Becker said.
He repeated the procedure, this time using his fingernails instead of the palms of his hands and going even slower. Karen groaned every inch of the way and arched her back.
“All this for dinner? I didn’t even offer you dessert.”
“I’m sure you will. You’re too good a hostess not to.”
“And you are a presumptuous male swine,” she said lightly. She pressed her foot into his groin.
“You seem to be a little tense in spots yourself, John.”
“It comes upon me at times.”
“I’ll let that one pass,” she said. ‘Too easy.”
Becker slid his hands all the way up her legs until his thumbs came to rest at the top of her inner thighs. He left his hands there, resting lightly with just a hint of pressure.
She opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time in minutes.
“When did you know we were going to do this?”
“Right about when you did,” Becker said.
“I didn’t,” she said.
Becker grinned at her.
“I didn’t!.. I did not,” she insisted. Becker continued to grin. “All right, I did.”
“When?”
“Not until I saw you hanging from the mountain,” she said. “Not a moment before that, I swear.”
She slid her legs around his back and pulled him onto her. After a moment she stopped him with a touch and slipped out from under his body.
“Pray he’s asleep,” she said.
Karen tiptoed to her son’s room and peeked silently at his recumbent form. His eyes were closed and his breath came slowly and easily. She said a quick and indifferently directed prayer of thanks for small favors and returned to the living room.
Becker was not in the room, but her bedroom door was ajar. She entered expecting to find him naked under the covers, but when she saw him standing in the middle of the room with only his shoes off, she realized how much she had forgotten about the man. He was a deliciously slow and lingering lover, accomplishing in an hour what more energetic men would fail to achieve in ten minutes, and he relished every step of the process. So did she.
“He’s asleep,” she said. “We’re in luck.”
“I’m the lucky one.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, pressing against her from foot to face as if no amount of contact could be enough. The kiss was a form of seduction in itself. His lips explored hers languidly, almost shyly, but at the same time with a certainty of purpose. They seemed to Karen to be seeking out the proper join of his flesh and hers, and when they found it, his lips rested there on hers, pressing just firmly enough. She felt herself weaken and behind her closed eyes she had the sensation of a long, slow, very safe tumble through space. She loved to kiss, and Becker was one of the few men she’d ever known who loved it as much as she did.
They seemed to kiss for hours. Karen knew that later the kisses would become hard, fierce, demanding, but not until they were both ready and could no longer restrain themselves. That was lust, this was love. Or at least it felt that way, she thought. For the moment it felt that way and for the moment that was more than enough.
Finally his hands began to move, stirring as if awakened from slumber. Slowly they traversed her back in opposite directions. One hand reached her neck, caressed her there, then moved upwards into her hair. Karen felt her whole scalp tingle with his touch. As earlier with her hands and feet, she became aware of a source of sensory pleasure she had long forgotten. She wanted it never to stop and, as if sensing her desire, Becker ran his fingertips to the top of her head, across her temples, gently down over her ears, then started back up again from the neck. Karen groaned against his lips. Once more she had the feeling that her mind was being released and tumbling languorously backwards. A swoon must feel like this, she thought.
Only when his fingers had stopped moving on her head and returned to her back did his other hand begin to explore. It slid slowly downwards, into the small of her back where it paused, as if seeking permission, before slipping onto the swell of her buttocks. It followed the curve of the buttock to where it met the leg, then came up again until it reached the hip. His fingers spread across the hipbone and stretched until they stopped just short of the pubes.
Karen pulled his shirt from his belt and ran her hands up his back. He leaned away from her just far enough to insinuate one hand into the neck of her blouse. His fingers began the slow and tantalizing descent to the rising mound of her breasts. Again he lingered for a long time, just beyond the breast, as if uncertain or not daring to continue. By the time his hand lowered still farther, Karen’s body was screaming for him to continue.
Later, when his lips replaced his fingers on her nipple and she emitted a shuddering sigh, Karen admitted to herself that she was overmatched. Becker seemed capable of giving her more pleasure and more excitement than she could stand. Certainly more than she could give in return.
And much later, when he had finally removed all of her clothes and she had torn away the last of his and he eased her to the bed, she decided she was just a greedy bitch who was going to have to take all of this magnificent love-making and quit worrying about what she brought to it. It was not a hard decision.
They lay breathless for some time, as if stunned by what had happened. At the end they had both been howling, and Karen had bitten into her pillow to stifle some of her loudest roars. The howls had turned to astounded laughter as they drifted down together, and then subsided altogether as they lay in each other’s arms and panted against each other’s skin.
“I’d forgotten what you were like,” Karen said at last.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I mean that as a compliment. I don’t think you used to make love this way, did you? How can you possibly do it that way all the time?”
“I don’t, normally,” Becker said. “I happen to like you.”
“I got that impression.”
“Actually. I don’t do it at all, lately. It’s been a long time.”
“I know.”
“Is that in my file, too?”
