Romantic Erotica
"Blackberry Blossom" a sex story by Julian Augustus Finisterre
She came to gradual awareness as the sky began to lighten, awakening from her own deeper night into a lighter gray.
"I have dreamed his dreams," she thought, lying next to him, feeling his warmth and the measured rising and falling of his chest as he slept. She felt at ease beside him, there beneath the weight of a thick wool Mexican blanket and a feather comforter. That did not often happen, this feeling of ease; not with a man, nor really anyone else. She had grown accustomed to a measure of solitude in her life that sometimes seemed all encompassing. But this, this was nice.
Her dreams had been of water running; not the dreams of open faucets, or of the dripping hose, that often enough simply portends a trip to the bathroom, but of rapidly moving water, dancing over current-worn boulders and banks of shale, water moving muscular and smooth, steadily along the outer edge of a slow river-bend. She marveled even that she lay there beside him, with the wind outside beginning to move mournful and low through the yellowing birch. The focus of her thoughts softened and wandered, as sleep tried calling her back.
What had possessed her? She would never know, nor did she particularly care. It had all simply seemed so natural—the leaping flames casting shadows into the night, the heat of the fire and the primal, hypnotic power of the music they had made. Had she ever done such a thing before? She couldn’t remember, and thought “probably not.” Never before would she have even considered acting as she had, letting herself go so freely with a man, particularly one she really knew nothing about. Lowering the violin, placing it into its case and rising, to sway as she had done, to the soft rhythms he continued to play. She wanted him to see her, to see her arousal and to be aroused by her. She wanted him to see her body, hungry in that firelight.
Slowly she had moved around the ring of stones, till she stood but an arm’s length from him, her hips moving slowly, the long veil of her dark hair swinging, and her eyes upon his, drinking him in. Her movement had been her power, her body not quite her own. Fingers moved slowly to the buttons of her blouse, chosen so carefully, she now admitted, to show her flat, brown midriff to its best possible purpose. One after the other, the buttons loosed, and her blouse hung open, her small breasts free beneath it. And the hunger shone, now in his eyes. A shrug of her shoulders and it fell away.
Still he had played on, his fingers picking out a sinuous, sensuous melody that was compelling, sweet and liberating. The low slung little shorts that rode just upon her hip-bones slowly followed suit, easing over her thighs to drop about her ankles. She swayed before him in nothing but the tiny pair of lacy silk panties—also chosen carefully, but with less hope of being exhibited, at least when she had set out yesterday…
As she lay there, the shadows began to shift as the light grew and pushed them across the steeply pitched ceiling of the cabin, and then onto and across the floor. It would soon be morning. She passed her hand over the smooth planes of her belly, letting her fingers come to rest between her thighs. She listened to the trees’ mournful murmuring, and thought, "I can play that...," and their song became to her a mountain fiddler's lament to easy weather's passing. He shifted in his sleep beside her and rolled to his side, facing the loft wall, leaving behind him an area of warmth that she appropriated as hers. "He has a strong, warm back..." she thought, easing closer, "a furnace."
He loved to listen to her play; that was plain. Was that it? Partly... He'd sat there last night, leaning back against the porch railing, balancing the big guitar idly across his lap as she moved back and forth, over the rolling planks of the floor, drawing the bow across the strings of her violin, easing forth into the purple evening the strathspeys and reels, the jigs and marches they found that they both loved so well. The night-birds sang counter-point and finally coaxed him into playing, though he only wished to watch and listen. Yes, that was a big part of it. To truly listen, to take in, as if into one's heart even, the ancient emotive power of those nameless melodies, at once so old and newer than the dew, and let them carry you, hold you in their net of solace and longing. Through the curtain of her hair she had looked out and watched him, solemn, his fingers pulling forth the notes that fell into place behind hers, and when he had asked her if she would like to stay, she had said yes.
Musically Inclined by Marty Provost available at ObsessionArt.com
They played through 'til darkness, then he had built a fire within the ring of stones set just off the porch, and the night stilled, leaving them the dance of the river, just out of sight, and the slow fade of the fire. Sometimes they talked, of dreams and boats and children. Sometimes their contentment was to hear again the fiddle and the guitar, come together with such unexpected and pleasurable ease, present in the silence now, and the feeling of the rough oak-bark at their backs, and in the smell of the wood-smoke floating off into the night.
His hunger had been evident; his arousal plain to her in the bulge of his khaki shorts, seemingly bracing the big guitar from beneath. His playing slowed, and she turned for him, presenting her bottom, for his inspection and pleasure. The white silk barely covered her, she could feel it riding up between her buttocks, and knew that the heat of her own arousal had dampened them. Could he see that? Could he feel her heat, now degrees hotter than that cast out by the flames?
Of course he could, and he had to warm himself at its source, yes, risk burning himself, blistering his fingers and lips, his soul even, in the fire that she offered. He had placed his strong hands upon her hips, brought her around again, then with gentle pressure upon her, lowered her down, so that her face was level with his own. Her haunches rested upon her heels, her legs two gates swung wide, and they had kissed. For an eternity they had kissed, as seasons passed them by, forests rose and fell, and boldly he had placed his hand between her thighs, cupping her, pressing upon her most intimate, tender flesh.
She watched him as he slept, the sunlight now slipping into the loft, catching his hair and illuminating the mix of copper and gold, interwoven ever-so-slightly, she was pleased to see, with silver. Her own, thick and dark, dropping a veil over her bare shoulder, wore those same silvering streaks, really the only outward signs of her age; her eyes were clear and blue, as yet uncomplicated by crows-feet, and the laugh-lines that she bore had always been there. He was handsome and would look like his father, or at least like the picture of his father hanging on the wall. The resemblance shown in the eyes and the cast of the mouth...no, the whole line of his jaw was his father's. Good strong arms and gentle hands, sun-browned skin and a vague air of concern. Gentle hands that had held her as easily as they had the guitar, with assurance and with grace.
"This is indeed a rare comfort, Henry Wilder," she thought, leaning up on one arm, for a last look at him sleeping. "And who would've thought?" She smiled and kissed him lightly, the stubble on his cheek catching at her lip, then slipped naked out of bed, to climb softly down the ladder from the loft.
She took his shirt up from in back of the chair where it had landed last night, and put it on, the dark green chamois still cool with the night. The shirt smelled of him, of smoke from the fire and of his musk. Standing there in his shirt, smelling him in it, brought back the feelings of night-time so recently passed, of the smoothness of her thighs held tight to either side of his hips, the heavy wool blanket sliding down, off her back, unnecessary. How long had it been?
Much, much too long. Too long for the niceties, the subtleties of conventional seduction. Those would be there, she knew that. She knew that as soon as they settled in and began to speak comfortably together. She was not afraid. She sought the satisfaction of a hunger that she had allowed to lay dormant much, much too long.
He had known how to touch her, where to touch her, to make her moan and to seek out further pressures upon her. Stroking her thighs, caressing the undersides of her buttocks, he had brought her fires further yet, burning so fiercely that she nearly beseeched him there and then, to take her, to violate her, to release her. But instead she had touched him, taken hold of him through his shorts and felt the urgency of his own need, aching beneath her grip. She opened his shorts and revealed him naked and full, nothing covering his powerful shaft. She smiled at that and stroked him, searching his eyes, assuring herself of the power of their connection. And it was there, as surely as the oaks behind him, as certainly as the music that the river provided for them, filling in the charged silence that their passion had created.
She buttoned the shirt half-way and began quietly to make coffee, pouring water from a six gallon can into the blue enameled pot, blackened and in need of scrubbing. His "camp pot" he called it. She measured coffee into the perforated basket and set the pot upon the electric stove, setting the burner well below high so as not to boil the coffee. "I could easily get the hang of this place," she thought half-aloud, "bathroom-less though it may be." There seemed to be simple things, intuitive connections that she made without thought, which made sense to her. She felt an odd and somewhat disconcerting familiarity with the smaller realities of his existence that pleased her.
She stepped out of the kitchen area, over his jeans and moccasins, into his moccasins, past to the bookshelves lining the two nearer walls. He had read for her afterwards: Neruda and Thomas, Lorca and Montague, late, late, the only light that of a kerosene lantern, the old railroad style, and the tone, the warmth of his voice reading had seemed to blend with the cast orange lantern-light, the smell of past wood fires and spent ashes. The words of the poems had become unimportant to her. Now the listening was hers; the music, the modulation, the rhythm of this poetry, of these poets, held her and brought her in close to him, tighter against side and shoulder, to rest her head upon him, and from there to continue what had certainly been unintended, though not perhaps unexpected: a series of slow movements, of givings and takings, memories of shadow, darkness and light, gently this time, with the scent of sawn cedar all about.
She heard him stir above, roll in bed. Then he began to snore. This pleased her, and she smiled thinking, "just don't break wind...you'll ruin everything if you do." She had to step onto the porch to laugh at this thought.
The morning was warming and blue. She heard the coffee percolating and stepped back in to pour a cup, then brought it back out with her. The track that was his driveway wound up out of the birch along a slight rise to the cabin, the only spot around approaching high ground. His truck was parked in front, an old green GMC, his wood-strip canoe riding on top of a homemade camper shell. She stepped off the porch and walked to the truck. The canoe was beautiful; dark strips of redwood covered with fiberglass, well worn, showing signs of use and respect. This was the boat in which he set out for whatever, spent the best of his time in. She could see that in the luster of the wood, and the painted eyes he had given the boat; she knew it from the way he spoke of rivers. She ran her fingers over the gleaming varnish and said aloud, "He is nothing if not a dreamer, and a beautifully impractical man. And that is probably it, and why...." She walked back to the porch, the footprints she trailed a darker green against the silvery, dewy grass.
And what more might they share? What more might they know together? He would take her any place she cared to travel, lift her to heights she had only imagined. He had taken her indeed. Bent her over to reveal herself, stripped away the silk that scarcely concealed her, taken in her essence exquisitely, roughly, sweetly. And she had done the same and more, for him. Her lips and tongue teased him, took him in, brought him within sight of the heavens, his hands nearly grasping the stars above, but she had wanted that cosmos to explode within her. She would form new constellations with him—The Horseman and His Mare--.and so they did, in the last few moments of a galaxy’s creation. Shouting together their climax, they shivered the leaves above them, held the river’s current static for the time it takes to take in and release three breaths, and gave pause to the owls, who halted their night-chase of calls just long enough to ponder the presence of this new and compelling beast.
There was still no sign of him. She opened the door to listen. No movement upstairs. She refilled her coffee and placed it on the porch-rail, then walked back in to take up his guitar. C.F. Martin the headstock read, Est. 1833. The guitar was surprisingly light for all its size; mahogany neck and sides, soundboard of Sitka spruce. She carried it out and sat upon the rail, in reach of her mug. She had played guitar, as well as fiddle and some mandolin, for years. She had heard Doc Watson as a girl, and had never been the same since. Mountain music simply moved her, in ways she barely understood, as it did him, upstairs sleeping. "What are the odds of this?" she wondered, sounding the strings, checking the tuning, thinking of all the cads and shit-heels she had known in her time. She had nearly come to consider the race of men as hopeless and helpless. "And not that you're necessarily any better, Buster," she smiled, "but your heart's sure in the right place." She struck a progression of chords, extending her fingers sharply out over the strings. The guitar rang like a bell in the morning air. A squirrel paused in transit, considering her from the height of a woodpile. She let the weight of the instrument lie across her thigh, running her fingers over the rolling wood, thinking of how he had traced a similar pattern upon the hollow of her belly, up the rise of her hip. The thought made her shiver. She worked her way into the old songs, humming and singing softly, giving voice to the lyrics of Shady Grove and Darlin' Corey, Barbara Allen and When First Unto This Country. Then further, the instrumental melodies coming to her: Salt Creek, Cattle in the Cane, The Fiddler's Dram. She played the guitar finger-style, picking and pinching the notes of the melody and the chording behind it with her fingers, rather than with the flat-pick that he preferred. His was a more percussive technique, one that allowed the picker great speed with facility, more of a true bluegrass style, while she brought to the melodies counterpoints and contradictions, grace-notes and other borrowings from the fiddle, a cautious sense of subtlety.
She remembered a tune that she had learned long ago, first heard played on an autoharp when she was a child, a melody that seemed to climb and intertwine, double back upon itself in playful variations of the initial tune. She began it slowly, letting her fingers remember the path up and down the fret-board, sounding the notes as they came to her, in their own context of memory and place, losing herself in a sense of transport that cared nothing for memory, that denied even the existence of time or place, picking up tempo and ornament, conscious only of the sound of the big guitar and the scents of the morning warming. She played her song in and out, up and down, back and through again, lost. She had no notion of how long he had been standing inside the door, naked, listening.
"That's lovely, Cady... does it have a name?
“Yes, it does," she said, smiling a little self-consciously, Blackberry Blossom. And she laid the guitar to one side, arose, and embraced him once more.
And what more shall we know, my sweet, of this infinite field of harmony? What more, what more?
Copyright August 15, 2011
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.