Come Live with Me and be my Love

This is my entry for the Halloween 2021 contest! It's a little spooky, and a little melancholy; no blood, guts, or gore if that is not your thing. It's a love story featuring fully consensual sex between adult characters.

If you like it, please consider voting. And Happy Halloween! - Lily -

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The last fingers of daylight were drifting through sparsely garlanded branches as she walked toward the little cottage.

The air had begun to crisp, and she felt a tiny shiver drift across the small of her back. The leaves that still clung stubbornly to their branches brought a fiery orange relief against a leaden grey sky. Those that had surrendered carpeted the earth; the ones covering the stone path she had travelled so often were swept up and off the ground in rhythm with her practiced steps. She was singular in her purpose.

He had built this cottage for her.

She lived in a larger house in the city now. The cottage was only half an hour away, give or take, depending on the snarls of the city traffic. For the past ten years, her friends had tried to talk her into selling the cottage, but over time they just shook their heads in bemused wonderment.

"The property value has skyrocketed," they would say to each other over coffee or wine. "Why is she still hanging on to it? She's let everything else go and moved on, hasn't she? It's not healthy, after all these years." Her friends loved to discuss what was and wasn't healthy, especially as it related to other people.

When she lost him, she thought the grief would swallow her. He died young of an old man's disease, his healthy, muscular body disintegrating before her eyes. There were treatments, of course, but they could only slow the relentless criminal that crawled through his body, stealing his strength. She fed him and bathed him and held him and loved him until one day he was gone and she was gone too, the best and brightest part of her.

She reached into her purse, pulled out the key. The key fob was a gag gift she had put in his stocking on their first Christmas. It said "When life gives you lemons, grab salt and tequila." It slid perfectly into the lock, as if not a day had passed, and she flipped the deadbolt and pushed the door open.

The smell of the cedar planking rushed into her nose, making her suddenly feel heady and unstable. She should have known, she should have been ready for it, but she always forgot until it was too late. "It's always like this," she told herself, as she reached out to touch the wall, to ground herself.

The cottage was small, modest, just a bedroom, and a small living room off of the galley kitchen. They had lived there the entire time they were married. It was inconvenient at times, when they visited friends for dinner parties and had to drive home sober afterwards, down the dark, twisting roads. Sometimes the space felt cramped, and they snipped at each other. But mostly it felt like a refuge, a lovers bower, their own little mismatched, well worn piece of paradise. Until the sickness had invaded.

She unburdened herself of a large canvas bag and a mesh bundle of kindling and firewood. She shrugged off her wool coat, draping it over the coat hook by the door, and went to work. There was no rush, she always left plenty of time for ritual.

She took a flashlight out of her purse and descended the basement stairs to the fusebox. The central breaker gave a hefty click, and then the cottage began to hum with electricity.

Returning upstairs, she went to the door and brought the tote to the kitchen and placed it on the counter. Out of it, she pulled a bottle of red wine and a bottle of tequila and set them both on the counter. She had bought them on the first of the month; there was no reason to buy them so early, of course, other than the recognition that another year had passed and she could feel her growing heat and the excitement of the inevitability of this night.

For a moment, she let her fingers drift across the smooth surface of the bottles, feeling their rigid smooth hardness. She shivered, closing her eyes for a moment, willing her breath to steady.

It was starting early this time. Or was it just her imagination?

She exhaled forcefully, to clear her head. Then, reaching into the canvas bag, she pulled out the stack of old newspapers, and then went back to the front door to fetch the bundle of firewood.

Kneeling in front of the living room fireplace, she began the process of building the fire. He always asked her to build the fire. She knew he could build fires just as well, perhaps even better than she could. But he knew she loved to do it, and he knew she loved being good at it.

The process was methodical: crumple the newspapers to form a base, use the smaller sticks to build the log cabin above and around it. She used half of the kindling, then lay half of the larger logs to the side to add to the fire once the rest caught.

The match trembled in her hand as a wave of desire shook her. She closed her eyes and counted backwards from five, to bring herself back. Her hand, almost of its own accord, struck the match against the flint of the box, and she lit the papers, watching the kindling catch. The larger logs, she then lay carefully on top of the structure, watched them for a moment, licked by the flames underneath, She took the remaining wood and newspapers into the bedroom.

"Two fireplaces?" she had laughed when he showed her the plans. "In this tiny place? You're crazy! It's going to look ridiculous from the outside!"

"Oh, you'll thank me," he said, taking her into her arms "on all those freezing winter nights we have in store out here. Besides," he slid his hands down her back and over her ass, "It's my dream to fuck you in front of a fire in our little cabin. Wouldn't it be nicer on a soft, comfortable bed than on the floor in the living room?"

In their little cottage, the desire for comfort was nothing compared to their desire for each other. There were many nights when they had fucked for hours on the floor in front of the living room fire, laughing, moaning, changing positions. On the floor, in the kitchen, in the bedroom; she couldn't think of a centimetre of that cabin where they hadn't loved and loved and loved each other.

She thought of this as she built the fire in the bedroom. She thought of the night that he had come home from his crappy job to report that he had gotten a raise. It was a tiny raise, she knew that now, he was still so undervalued back then. But he was so happy that his mouth opened after he had kissed her hello and he trailed his gently down her neck, over her breast.

Then his kiss became more commanding, more insistent, and he wrapped his arms around her, pushing his hand up into her hair. He broke away from her, breathing hard, and his eyes bored into hers as he backed her into the wall, diving into her mouth again, consuming her. He moaned into her mouth and bent his knees so that he could press his hot, clothed sex against her centre. She could feel him, hard, her pussy spasmed, but it wasn't enough, the angle wasn't quite right, but then he reached under her ass to lift her...

Her eyes opened. She could feel wetness seeping into her panties. How long had she been kneeling here in the hearth? The fire was built, kindling and logs in place, sitting quietly, She didn't remember remember building it.

It was unlit. Waiting. She did not light it.

She'd better get a move on. She needed to finish before it started.

She got up and brushed a bit of ash off of her knees. Then she went to the corner, to the heavy standing mirror. Ornate and fussy, he had picked it up off the side of the road as a battered antique and refinished it. It didn't match anything in the cottage. But then, nothing in the cottage matched.

It was a bitch to move, though. Foot by foot, she lugged it across the room until it stood at attention at the foot of the bed. A bit out of breath, she took a moment to look around to make sure everything was perfect.

It was.

Leaving bedroom, she went back to the kitchen and pulled five thick pillar candles out of the bag. She placed them carefully and lit each one as she moved through the cottage: the first on the floor in front of the door, the second one on the coffee table in the living room. The final three candles were for the bedroom, one on each bedside table, and one on the dresser. The three candles formed a perfect triangle.

As if in a trance now, she moved back into the kitchen and opened a cupboard, and pulled down a shot glass and a wine glass. There was no searching, no fumbling: she had not been there for a year and yet her hand found the items instinctively. She poured a shot of tequila and tossed it back. No lemon, no salt, she was not a rowdy student playing at adulthood. She was a believer taking communion, a priestess in sacred ritual.

In the months after he died, she could sense some part of him near her still. This made her frantic, trying to reach him. She abandoned all reason, all rationality. Near her new home, in the city, she had shamefacedly bought a Ouija board from a local bookstore. "It's a gag gift," she had lied. Despite herself, she had allowed hope, excitement.

Then, after several attempts, what had seemed to promise such mysticism faded, and she had seen with true eyes nothing more than cheap plastic and gimmicky lettering. But what had she expected?

And she still knew he was there.

She hired an artisan to craft her a wooden Ouija board. "For a gift," she had said this time, and he had merely rolled his eyes and taken the commission. He had seen a lot of women go nutty this way, with their crystals and their vision boards and their motivational quotes. The board was beautiful, but completely dead inside. The planchette wouldn't budge for her, not an inch.

But still, she knew he was there.

Next came the visits to mediums, to tarot readers, to psychics, to tea leaf readers. She learned her life path number and had her aura printed out on an ancient printer while the aura reader's poodle looked on balefully. She bought dozens of books about speaking to the recently deceased, about crossing over, which she kept in the bedroom so that her friends wouldn't see them. She went to the live show of a popular TV psychic whose eyes drifted right over her, but told the man sitting next to her that his dead wife wanted him to know that he had lost something, "something... wait... something that starts with the letter...C."

"My credit card?" the man had quavered, looking panicked, but not thinking to look in his wallet for the answer.

Still, she knew he was there.

It was desperation that brought her back to the cottage eight months after he died, on Halloween night. Halloween: the night when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. That's what the woman at the new age shop where she had bought her candles and tarot deck had told her. Until then, she had been avoiding the cottage, she thought that her grief might consume her the moment she stepped over the threshold, that she might lose herself, evaporate.

As she unearthed a corkscrew from a drawer, she let her mind drift away from that first Halloween. Her mind drifted through and over subsequent Halloweens here at the cabin as she opened the bottle of red and poured herself a glass. Then she took it to the sofa in the living room and gazed into the fire. She allowed her eyes to relax, to blur, and slowed her breathing, as she watched the leaping flames. She focused her mind on those times. The other times.

And she waited for him to come.

He didn't arrive all at once, he drifted in like mist, bringing low subtle vibrations. They began at the base of her spine, warm. Washing into her like gentle waves. She was never sure at what point he had fully arrived. Maybe these sensations were only anticipation, nerves, hope. Maybe they had nothing to do with him. She didn't care.

She shifted unconsciously in her seat, and her back arched slightly, almost imperceptibly. Then she leaned back against the plush cushions of the sofa and closed her eyes.

Slowly, slowly, she felt the energy build behind her, as if it were positioned beyond the sofa, leaning against it. The energy began threading like fingers into her hair, stroking over her scalp and down her neck to her shoulders. It always started like this, with him behind her. She always wondered if some magic compelled him to come through the front door, as she did, as he always used to. But she never turned to look when she sensed him coming. She didn't want to take the risk, to break the spell, to sully the magic.

She felt him trail down over her breasts, and she arched higher. She was fully clothed, but it didn't matter, he was already on her skin, firm pressure. It was cold, always cold at first, but it made her nipples pebble and stand tight, so tight, and she moaned as she felt his energy begin to pool around against them. Little brushes, tugs, and glorious pressure around her breasts, lifting them, as if to two invisible mouths, which began to suckle.

She moaned, her body taut, suspended in pleasure, and he began to creep down her belly. Slow, he was always slow, always had been slow, in the time before. He liked making her wait. She felt him encircle her waist, he became shivers, and trickled up her spine.

Formless, he loved her all at once, consuming her completely, He was still at her breasts, both of them, working both nipples rhythmically as if suckling, and now around her waist and her back and oh God, now further, further down.

She spread her legs apart as he came down over her pussy, gently, It was as if he had his whole hand over her, applying gently pressure, but not inside her lips, not yet. It provided the scantest relief for her hungry pussy, needy for touch, stimulation, desperate for release. She felt her hips press against him, but it was no use, he moved with her keeping the pressure constant and whisper light, tormenting her. She felt her wetness seep out through her folds. Her panties, already soaked, were unable to absorb more, and she felt herself begin to coat her thighs. Her hips bucked urgently into the empty air.

And then, she felt it. Movements, like fingers, down along her pussy lips, and then she was parted, held wide. He was holding her open, underneath her clothes. She couldn't help it, her eyes snapped open and she looked down to see him opening her.

But, of course, she couldn't see, of course, she was still fully clothed, she had forgotten. She could just make out the rhythmic motions of her breasts under her shirt, still being sweetly suckled, and the movement in her pants as he spread her. She moaned again, more loudly this time and watched her hips writhe up, toward nothing, again, again, again.

He held her like this, suspended for a few brief moments. She was lost in sensation: the tendrils feeling their way down her scalp, down her chest, up her back. The gentle suck and pull on her nipples, the sweep and caress over her stomach, and the exposed urgency of her cunt, fucking the air, desperate. Breathy whines escaped her throat as her hands gripped the sofa cushion under her.

She was going to come, he was going to make her come with her hot centre stretched open, make her come only with the pressures and teases and touches on the rest of her body.

Her mouth dropped open further, her jaw slackened, and then she felt him there, slipping into her mouth, stimulating her lips, teasing her tongue. And that penetration was enough, she began to shake, to wail, and she was coming, her pussy stretched open but untouched. She bucked against the air, her neglected clit throbbing desperately, her cunt clenching again and again and again against nothing.

Her shoulders were pressed into the back of the couch, her feet into the floor, her body was a violin string stretched impossibly tight between them. Slowly, she juddered to release, and collapsed, gasping, inert. As her body relaxed into the couch, the fire died suddenly in front of her.

Instantly extinguished.

And then, as she always did, she heard the other fire, the one in the bedroom that she had prepared and left unlit, begin to crackle and catch.

Slowly, she stood, her eyes unfocused, but her body steady. Her hands moved to the buttons on her blouse, which she undid with ease. It slid to the floor, and she undid her bra, dropping it carelessly. Her juices had so drenched her panties that when she pulled the underwear down, viscous threads stretched between her centre and the garment until they broke off, smearing her already soaked thighs. Socks, watch, jewelry, and then she turned, totally nude, and walked to the bedroom.

The fire was roaring.

Once there, she climbed onto the bed and waited. He always approached her differently here, sometimes from the feet, sometimes the head, sometimes up through the bottom of the bed. Tonight he began at her ankles, swirling up her legs as if he were vines. She closed her eyes and shivered at the sensations.

He was tendrils, cold tendrils, seeking out all of her secret places of pleasure, but they weren't secret of course, not to him. He played on in the creases of her hips, in the small of her back, reaching further up and around her breasts, holding them caressing them, into the groove of her collarbone, up her neck, around the line of her law, up behind her ears and back into her hair. Tendrils, multiplying, working her, touching her, loving her, independently and yet together.

Her body was covered in subtle motion. She was held by him but also caressed, every movement, every inch seeking her pleasure, her joy. She was lost, drowning, she needed him.

"Please," she whispered.

And then she felt her body shift, she was pulled lower on the bed so he could lift her arms above her head and hold her there, pulling her legs further apart. And he pushed inside her, slowly, inch by inch and finally her pussy was sated, the thing she had been waiting for, the thing that she had been missing. He filled her void with delicious, loving pressure, him, her love, her great love.

And he began to move.

She closed her eyes. She remembered him, the shape and feel of his cock, and it wasn't his cock as it had been in life, not really, but he made it so for her, so she could keep remembering. And he knew the secret places inside her to meet again and again and again, and the speed that she liked, and he gave that to her too.

And she came to that moment that she always came to, but forgot from year to year, when she realized that in this form he could do everything she loved at once. They only had one night to relive their many lives, their many loves, one night, and it was never enough and she knew she could ask, knew he wanted her to ask.

"More, God, more, please more..." her voice trailed off, helpless.

And he began.

He brought the sucking and tugging back to her tits, both at once, sending sharp pangs between her nipples and her clit, as if they were connected by an electrical current. He began to drive into her more strongly, and she placed her feet on the mattress to meet him, opening further, inviting.

And he moved into her ass, gently, but firmly, knowing exactly how much she could take, how quickly. She moaned, loudly now, relishing the satisfying, brimming fullness moving to meet him faster.

And - she couldn't help it (but of course, she had known she would, after all, why else had she dragged the mirror?) - she lifted her head so she could watch, so she could see her holes open around him, take him in, flex against him. The mirror lied, of course, and said she was the only one in the bed, but through the changing shapes and indents on her body she could see him there, fucking her, loving her, and she wanted to watch forever. She watched him opening her pussy, opening her ass, watched as he stretched her open, watched him fucking her. But it was too intensely erotic, she couldn't control her body, and her head fell back onto the bed so that her hips could work higher and higher.