A Couple Pt. 01

She was lying back, relaxed, but still breathing through her mouth. "Why did we do that?"

I let the silence last, then said, "Are you overthinking us again?"

More silence. "I was hard, you were wet. There was suspension of inhibition, and our bodies did the rest."

Another pause as we let the glow dissipate in the late afternoon sun.

"There's more to it than that."

She looked over, blue eyes pulling me in as they always did. Lips pursed in a pout, inviting love and violence. I wondered if I would ever tie her up and beat some of that passion into wild, screaming submission.

"We desire each other. There's no reason for it, we are as different as day and night, but we do."

"I spend weeks drowned in my work, but you appear in the lab, taking time from one of your trips, and I go a little mad until we have coupled, and thrashed, and come."

I took Natalie's fingers and kissed them. We'd grown up summers at adjoining Italian villas near Lucca. We had watched each other be kids, and adolescents, and finally, what passes for adults. Later, when we were lovers, neither of us could understand why our lust for each other never bloomed in those days. Perhaps, as the Jesuits suggest, busy minds keep sinful thoughts at bay.

Our familes were American academics with inherited money that underwrote the summers in Italy, with an interruption or two for conferences, whose importance was stressed in conversation with Italian friends invited to frequent and boozy parties on the olive tree terraces.

In September, back in Ithaca, everyone underwent moods of depression as we awkwardly fitted ourselves back into classes, research labs, unfinished manuscripts and other trivia of the academy and their necessary, middle class kids.

I was the older of two bright children. I should revise that to say I was the bright enough older brother of a brilliant sister whose talents covered music, athletics and mathematics. If Lisa was a comet, I was the dark asteriod in her wake.

Natalie had one of my fingers in her mouth, sucking with the pouty lips. I wondered if we would ever untangle love and lust. Her breast was pink, and its generous, stiff nipple an exotic rose shade that sent a shiver through me whenever I had an opportunity to view it, and occasionally to stroke it.

"How many hours do I get this time?"

I leaned forward and kissed the pouty lips. Soft, sweet, welcoming. How did I deserve that?

"When I leave you, I can hardly concentrate on my work, I am so guilty. I curse myself for the arrogant bastard I am. This isn't drop-in sex. It's more. I fear the day I come to your door and your eyes tell me it is over."

She turned away and I saw her shoulders shake. "I talked to my aunt the shrink recently about us." Her voice was low and husky. "She was tough. She said, 'Do you think you are the first two lovers to be star-crossed? Can you imagine a love between you that is not conventional? Not bound by a marriage vow, by a household, by children?' "

"She asked me, 'Why do you keeping seeing each other? Is it just sex, or is there more?' "

"I started crying. She held me. She said, 'Go home, make yourself a stiff drink, and look inside to see if you can go on having a relationship of visits. If you can't, then you must break it off.' "

I reached over and turned her. "Why didn't you tell me. We haven't had secrets, have we?"

"No, I've never hidden anything from you. I don't know that I could. But some terrible little voice said, 'Better not bring this up if you are not prepared to lose him.' "

She climbed into my arms, saying "There. I didn't mind the voice, and I have told you. You're free to send me away."

I stood up and walked us to the railing on her balcony, absorbing that. Her house was halfway up the first range of hills and had a magnificant view of the valley. If you were the right age to have Sartre pounded into you in school, the existential angst of such beauty was never far away.

"But that's not what she said. She said that if deep inside, you decided this wasn't fair, you should send me away. Am I supposed to be getting a signal with this conversation?"

What she was doing was pressing herself into me, and rubbing her wet crotch on my thigh, and thusting her hot tongue into my mouth. I was hard in an instant. I grasped her thighs, raising her entrance to the tip of my erection and sliding her down, down, down. Her legs went tight around me and her cunt squeezed me rhythmically.

She whispered in my ear, "I agree. I was overthinking us. Let's fuck."

Afterwards, we swam lazily in her pool. As she went down the lane freestyle, the taut globes of her ass flexed in the sun. When she returned in backstroke, the curls on her mount were a minature parade float on display.

I went to the edge and grabbed my drink, watching her go by. In the way of women, she was sending me a message by not sending a message. She wasn't taking her aunt's advice. She wasn't breaking off anything. She was pushing our mess out into the center of the room, like a smelly turd, and suggesting it was up to me to clean it up.

I knew the solution wasn't here, in the seductive hills of the Peninsula. It wasn't where she worked, and was respected and admired.

She swam over and sipped my drink, smiling. I gathered all of her wet, naked beauty into my arms and kissed her neck.

"I have to go after dinner. The flight to Singapore leaves at eleven."

I touched her forehead. "Your aunt is right. What we have is more than lust and we do have to do something."

She leaned back and took a large gulp of drink. The blue eyes were serious and unblinking.

"And?"

Ball still in my court. Damn.

"Do you suppose we could possibly arrange calendars to go somewhere for ten days? A neutral corner where we could review the bidding?"

She leaned in, kissed me and whispered in my ear, "Review the bidding. I like that." She rubbed herself on my front while she thought some more.

"What kind of somewhere? Alaska? Greenland? The Caucausus?"

We had hiked together with friends in the Dolomites as teenagers. She was strong and fit then, and looked like she still was.

"My needs are good weather, good exercise outdoors, and privacy. Do you want to pick?"

She kept holding me tight and nibbled on my ear. "The lab has two European conferences they want me to attend in the spring and summer. Perhaps I can send you a note and you can see if your calendar can be arranged?"

Very early on, we had agreed no email. Whatever we had going on, email wouldn't help. And since we were both using corporate accounts, we didn't need prying eyes either.

"No, look up the dates while I'm still here and I'll take them with me and call you."

The blue eyes were bright. "Deal. Now take me over to the end of the pool and give me your best goodbye fuck."

Years of loving had built a vocabulary of sex between us. Something for every mood. Tender words, teasing words, dominance words. Surprisingly, no submissive words. I wondered if that was the key to our crazy relationship. A collision of two dominants, completely caught up in their great sex together, but not giving any ground.

I was feeling good after finally starting to do something about us. I thrust hard into her, bent over holding on to the pool edge. "Feeling good about that, are you, Oscar? Going to take me somewhere and beat me into submission?"

After that, her voice sang out, "You big cocked bastard, I've got you on the run. Take me. Prove you can fuck me properly." She clenched as hard as she could. Natalie didn't know it, but she was the only woman I had been seeing for over a year. Our infrequent sex was so good, my other women friends had just faded away. She was panting and pushing back hard into me. Almost there and then a rush as we both came and I filled her with a last gift of my best stuff.

She took a leisurely lap and back to wash me out of her and asked, "Do you want to light the grill?"

After dinner, served in her impeccable style as always, I drove away in my rental car towards the airport knowing a big step was being taken but in the dark about what was going to happen.

It took several calls and over a month to establish that we could have ten days with each other after the conference in Latvia in May.

Natalie knew a woman named Inge at the lab who was of Swedish descent and quizzed her about places for a redezvous after the Riga conference. One thing lead to another, especially after Inge discovered there was a man involved, and we were invited to use the family summer cottage on one of the Aland islands between Finland and Sweden.

She said to me over the phone, "Getting there is not too exotic. I can take the train to Tallinn and a night ferry to Mariehamn. When you get to Stockholm, there is a ferry, or a small plane. A taxi will take us to the cottage, and some neighbors will show us the neighborhood. It's on the water and there is even a small sailboat. Does that sound like what you had in mind?"

The calendar was harder on my end. I was an epidemiologist for the WHO, and nasty bugs and viruses were my business. A disease hotspot could appear at any time, and I was usually the first professional dispatched to get samples so whatever it was could be identified.

I willed the bugs to behave starting May 20 for ten days. I turned down several priority requests for non-emergency visits in May. I told my superior, the deputy Director General, that a family reunion of years standing was beginning on May 20 and he should protect my vacation days.

"Oscar, you are the only person we have ever had who will go anywhere anytime. I will pretend you are visiting the ISS and unavailable on Earth!"

All this so my love and I could attempt to work out our future. I told myself affairs of the heart almost never had good endings, and was darkly pessimistic about us.

I flew from Seattle to Brussels on the 17th, and spent the next day at the Pandemics section of the EU Commission. They were struggling with budget cuts that threatened several programs and their subvention to the WHO. A gloomy bunch of professional friends to talk to, but at least there had been almost a year without something serious breaking out and we smiled about that, in the fatalistic way medical people have.

Late in the afternoon, I flew to Stockholm and found a taxi to a hotel near the ferry dock. It left promptly at 0630, so I had a room service meal and turned in. It was already bright and sunny at 4 am at this latitude, and I had no trouble boarding and finding the excellent ferry buffet breakfast.

Natalie was standing on the pier when we docked at Mariehamn, having arrived at 4 am from Tallinn. I hugged her and spun us around. "We've got to stop meeting like this!" She kissed me hard, in front of many smiling eyes.

"I've already got a taxi waiting. He was so nice when I told him I was meeting my boyfriend at the Stockholm ferry. And he knows exactly where Inge's place is." The words tumbled out of her mouth, which I kissed again.

The driver welcomed me in excellent English and off we went on almost an hour's drive. I had changed dollars for kronor and the fare was reasonable. A neighbor had spotted the taxi and came over with the key and many pieces of local information, almost more than we could absorb. It seemed Inge's family was well regarded and part of a small community clustered around one of the many bays of water. The woman wished us well in our stay and said to come over if we needed anything. The local store was a quarter of a mile away, and the village bar had good food, we were told. Her voice sounded like perhaps the Americans would not cook for themselves, having other activities to keep them busy.

We explored the snug inside, paneled everywhere in birch. The main upstairs bedroom had a large bed with deep duvets on it. Natalie leaped into the middle of it and gazed at me with dark lustful eyes. I did want her, but my stomach was growling, so I grabbed her back out of the bed, with hand planted firmly in her crotch, and suggested a walk to check the lunch possibilities.

"You've lost your alpha male?" she teased. I wrapped my arms around her from behind and nipped at her ear. "Did you bring that book on bondage?"

She turned in my arms, "Bondage? I'm supposed to bring the bondage instructions?" She boxed my ears and said, "It is good to see you, especially here away from distractions."

As we walked down the narrow roadway toward the village, I told her, "My boss said he was going to tell people who needed me this week that I was visiting the space station." She looked sideways at me and laughed. "I can't top that. Researchers like me drive their own calendars. Maybe deep down, part of our problem is that my subconscious resents the demands WHO makes on you." Her smile was half serious, half teasing.

"Are we going to set aside a day to get drunk and let our two subconscious demons fight it out?"

I added, "You're a feminist and a scientist. Freud had lots to say about women and sex. Do you and your friends believe any of it?"

Her arm was firm around me and she kissed the side of my face. "Hmmm. Yes and no."

She stopped us in the path. "I can see in your eyes that you are thinking, 'That is just like a woman.' "

We both laughed and went on down the way. She said in a low, almost inaudible voice, "I'll talk to you about Freud after you've given me a proper fucking and lots of orgasms." Her hip bumped mine.

After drifting apart when we went to college and no longer followed the families to Italy in the summer, we had run into each other completely by accident at the 92nd Street YMCA in Manhattan, where a prominent leftist was excoriating White House behavior in the Middle East. The talk was terrible and she was happy to leave for the promise of a free drink and dinner.

Halfway through dinner, lubricated by martinis, we knew we were going to spend the night together. The meal and the wine were excellent. When the waiter handed us a dessert menu, I asked if she would like some, or share some. Her dark eyes stared at me and she said, "I think we need to go somewhere and do more catching up. I have roommates so maybe your hotel is better?"

I was at a nice but modest place over near the UN, and the room had a view over the East River.

She stood at the window and started removing clothes. "Do you have a cellphone?"

"Yes."

I could hear the line ringing. "Sylvia? Hi, I've met an old friend from years ago and I'm staying over at his place. We have a lot of catching up to do. Yes, I'll see you in class tomorrow."

I undid the zipper of an ordinary school dress. She had ordinary underwear on. She backed into me and wrapped my hands on her breasts. Her behind pressed against my crotch. I wondered exactly how far this was going.

She whispered, "I want you. Sexually that is. Ok?"

"We ran around Tuscany together for years and we never had any teenage lust for each other."

She let that hang out there for a long minute. "I realized at dinner that you are handsome and smart. I asked myself why we never dated back then. I'm interested in you. Are you interested in me?"

"Are we poaching on either side? I haven't had a woman friend in over a year. They can't stand my lifestyle."

"I'm a dull PhD student grinding it out with uncertain prospects and no boyfriend." She turned her head and smiled at me. I kissed her.

I undid her bra and kneaded the fine breasts I found underneath. "Do you want something to drink?"

"I'm full of that nice wine from dinner. Undress me and hold me here so we can watch the view. Oh, undress yourself too."

After a while of looking at the view, she changed places with me so she could get her hands on my hard cock. It was leaking and she smeared the slippery stuff around on me. "I don't last long when you do that."

"Let's mess around on the bed."

Messing around meant my tongue on her womanly parts, and her mouth sucking on me. Before long, I had her legs over my shoulders and my tip lodged inside her lips. "Ready?"

"Yes. Do me, Oscar. Pretend we are eighteen again and in my yard in Lucca when our parents were at someone's party. " She was still talking when I shoved smartly and went all the way up against her cervix.

"Oof, you are big and hard and feel like I imagined you would."

She stopped talking and I was guessing about how she wanted to fuck me. When in doubt, give her your best shot. After a half dozen thrusts, she gushed on me and wailed that she needed more and harder. In a minute or two, she moaned and had a hard orgasm, shaking both of us and beating her heels on my back.

I slowed and kissed her. "How was that?"

"You didn't come. I want more."

I flipped us over. "That's a bare cock in you, are you on the pill, do you want me to pull out?"

"I like it up here. I've never been on top of a real cock before. Can you feel this?" She squeezed me as hard as she could.

"I was on the pill a couple of years ago when I had a boyfriend for a while. But I gave it up. And I am dangerous right now. Do you have a condom with you?"

I lifted her up and placed her dripping pussy in front of my face. I grasped each buttock and eased her forward until my tongue was lapping at a delicious pussy.

My reverie was broken off when Natalie pulled my arm, urging us along the path. "What were you daydreaming about?"

"The first time we had sex, in that hotel by the UN."

"Why?"

"Because you hit on me so directly, and came so freely. You are the only woman I've ever had sex with whose body just seems to like to come. If anybody else had threatened me with orgasms like you did back there, I would have known they were bluffing."

She pulled my hand to her lips and kissed the fingers. "Thank you. I guess that's a compliment. You meant it that way, did you?"

"I did. Part of your attraction for me is how you can be so damned brilliant, a leader in your field, and still be all woman when we are together."

"My god, Oscar, you're making me blush and gush." She laughed at the crude alliteration.

We found a place with a terrace and some tables and sat down. The waitress said, "You must have just arrived. I notice new faces, and haven't seen yours until now. Will you have some lunch? The seafood salad is very good."

It was good. We sipped our chablis and eyed each other. I was waiting for the inevitable comment about how she would have to behave differently since I wasn't leaving in a few hours.

"You started this idea. You've miraculously freed yourself up for ten days. Is there an agenda? Or is it just sex and eating and walking and talking? And sleeping now and then?"

Her eyes sparkled at me, knowing it was much more, but signaling that starting with a light touch might be a good idea.

'When we saw each other in California, you told me we needed an opportunity to review the bidding. Are you going to fill in the blanks?"

"Yes, but the wine and the sunshine and the jet lag are making me fade."

"Let's go back. I want to stop at the store and get some snacks. We're bound to be awake and hungry in the night."

"What little there is of it this far north in May."

"Some places have blackout curtains, but that seems like such a shame."

We held hands going back. Adults our age didn't hold hands. You either had to be a lot younger or a lot older.

When we got back, I checked for hot water, which agreeably ran out of the tap. We stood in the shower together, washing off travel dust and sweat. I toweled her off and applied the lotion she brought, which I liked a great deal. We turned back the bed and lay in the bright sun, only half awake.

"This is very bad. Let me set the alarm for ninety minutes, and then we go for a walk, or screw..."

"Or both," I interjected.

She pinched my limp cock, "or both. And have dinner when the locals do so we can not be midnight zombies the whole time we are here."