Choices (15 page)

I stopped at the water’s edge and took in the view with all its heart stopping glory. Brandon noticed my tentativeness and swam back to the shoreline and stood beside me.

“You know, I always felt so insignificant when I stood next to the ocean. I always felt so small, really in the big scheme of life. How could God create something so majestic like the ocean and then create someone like me who can be so mundane.” I shrugged my shoulders.

He reached for my hand and pulled every inch of me as close to him as I could decently be on a public beach and whispered in my ear, “Laurel, you are far from insignificant and mundane. Don’t ever think that about yourself. If you only knew how I watched you with your children in the sunroom you would think it was creepy.” Between the smell of the ocean, his wet skin and the feel of his warm breath in my ear I nearly melted into
a puddle right there at his feet. I pulled away from him and looked at him and asked, “What do you mean watched me from the sunroom?”

“I was done your plans for the sunroom in about thirty minutes. The rest of the time I watched you play and love your kids in the pool. Laurel, you’re amazing with them
- loving, compassionate, and fun. They adore you. It’s so easy to see how you live and breathe for them. How could you ever think you were insignificant and mundane? I imagine your little patients love you just as much as your own children do. You truly have a gift for giving of yourself - your time and love and you have a special way with your children and I’m sure other people’s children that has touched my heart. It took every ounce of self-restraint I possessed to not run and join you and your kids in the pool. I’m sure you and your kids wouldn’t appreciate that and think that it was highly inappropriate. But, I wanted it so bad. You’re beautiful, Laurel, inside and out. I don’t need years with you to know that. I knew that the first time I met you and then watching earlier together just cemented everything I was feeling into my heart and my head. I want what you can give and right now. I don’t want to share it with anyone else. Just me and you. I want a piece of that love, compassion and fun you shared with your children. I want that for myself from you right now.”

My head was reeling, my heart was pounding, my legs were like rubber and the muscles in my lower abdomen and upper thighs were tightening and I knew exactly what that meant
. I’ve never felt so loved and respected for just being who I am - for just being me. Paul never said anything like that to me in the twenty some odd years I had been with him. Okay, I have no space in my head for Paul right now.
God, is this really happening? Did he really just say that to me? I want him on me everywhere!

“Brandon, I
...” I wasn’t even able to finish my thought. His salty thick smooth lips were on mine - his tongue exploring yet again. My arms wrapped around his waist and traveled up his muscular, sinewy back. It was my turn to whisper in his ear. “I don’t want to swim right now. It’s chilly. I want to get wet in other ways.”  He whisked me off my feet and cradled me in his arms and carried me back to the tent.

It all happened so fast but I remember it all as if it were carved into and onto my brain. The smell and sound of the ocean, the feel of the cool sand beneath our bodies and sleeping bags, the birds soaring and calling through the midnight blue skies but, most importantly the smell and feel of him - woodsy and earthy and salty and powerful and strong - all of it ingrained into my long term memory forever reminding me of a weekend of true passion and desire.

“I want to go slowly and explore, but I can’t hold back any longer Laurel.” His hands were on my face, his eyes were searching,
and his lips were parted waiting expectantly for my answer. I dug my hands into his hair and I crushed my lips to his. We fell to the floor of the tent. His body pressed on top of mine with full urgency. His kiss was even more surging. Our bodies moved desperately. Brandon ripped my bathing suit bottoms off with one hand while the other was untying the top and his lips were grazing my lips, my cheeks and my neck. My hands were busy with the waistband of his board shorts. Finally, with not the least bit of finesse, we were naked. His hands caressed my thighs while I bit his shoulder. Brandon’s glorious body spread my legs apart and my hips arched to meet his. “Laurel, are you sure? I want to make love to you so bad it hurts but if you’re not ready, I’ll wait. I have protection too. I hope you don’t think I was so sure I was gonna get some, well, I was hoping” He saw my frown and kept fumbling his way through his explanation, which I thought was adorable, “… but oh hell…I just wanted to be…oh, shit, never mind I’m getting myself into trouble here. What I’m trying to say is that I have it, it’s just in my wallet which I have locked in the truck. Stupid, I know, huh? I just always keep my wallet in the truck. I didn’t want you to think…” He voice was hoarse and rough but everything about his face was tender and pleading. He started to roll away from me but my own hips were answering their own ancient and primitive dance of desire that could only be quenched in one way.

“I’m an old lady Brandon. It’s hard to get pregnant at forty, not impossible just difficult and besides it took me a whole year to get pregnant with Jake and even then I needed a lot of help, too. I’m not worried.” I whispered and
I arched my lower body upward even further to meet him. He firmly planted his hands on the floor of the tent with my head between them. “You’re sure?” He hovered and looked expectantly, hopeful with tender eyes filled with smoky desire. My answer was to place my hands on his glorious backside, raise my hips and push. I took every inch of him - so fast my guttural moan scared a few birds away that had gotten too close to the tent. I was more than ready. He raised himself up on his arms while we began to create our own music and looked into my eyes and smiled. Time and space began to spin and whirl. He whispered in my ear how amazing I felt and how he wished to make love to me again before we were even finished. He pulled out and then slammed home fiercely. His hands were snarled in my hair, his lips were crushing mine. I couldn’t hold back any longer. My release was building leaving me on the brink of shuddering and stuttering. He pumped and thrusted his hips while kissing me again, deeper and deeper still. His need was becoming more urgent and aggressive. Brandon let out a moan that made my stomach knot and the heart of me spread even wider, straining to receive even more of him to bring him closer still trying desperately to keep him inside me even deeper. He arched up onto his toes, buried deep inside the very heart of me and rocked, rocked up and down, hard and fast and then harder and faster still and before I knew it I was riding the glorious wave of pure sensation. I could feel his muscles shorten and tighten in his shoulders and his lower back and his face was awash with a vulnerability that made me want to weep with joy at the possibility of finding someone with emotional depth and fearlessness. While his desire peaked, he filled not only my body with his biology, not only my ears with his ragged breathing and cries of pleasure, not only my nose with his incredibly luscious scent, not only my eyes with his bewildering beauty but my soul with his tenderness, passion, acceptance and attention. We completed our own primal dance amidst groans and cries and growls of intense pleasure and pain. Tonight was a night to remember forever.

After our first frantic time together Brandon was ready again thirty minutes later-one benefit of a younger man. It seems the older I get, I’m more interested and preoccupied with sex so I was happy to oblige. I was dozing with my head in the space between his shoulder and neck. My leg sprawled over his and my knee encountered his desire. 

“Again? It’s only been...what…thirty minutes?” I murmured.

“So, who’s counting?” He rolled me on top of him. I sat up and straddled him.

“Please, let an old lady rest!”
I yawned.

“Old lady my ass! You know when you call yourself that, it really just makes me harder. Can’t you tell?” He rubbed up against my delicate skin and stroked my hair over my shoulders.  “I want to make love to you slowly now and
not bury you in the sand.” I nodded and stroked his desire up against my wet, silky curls again. “Finally! Someone who isn’t shaved bald! I love your hair, Laurel, all of it. He stroked my short, curly hair, found my pleasure center and squeezed. I gasped. “Hurt?” He asked hoarsely.

“Mmm…a little, but I like it.” I purred. I adjusted myself to push against his squeeze.

“Your wish is my command.” He squeezed again.

“Ahhh.” I cried out.

“Hurt?” His voice was rough and he was getting harder by the second.

“No, do it again.” He did a third time and I cried out again and thrust my hips forward to feel more sensation. He squeezed yet again and his other hand rubbed gently at first and then roughly across my nipples. I arched my back and found his balls, gently stroking with my fingertips. He groaned.

“Hurt?” I asked.

“No, do it again.” He nodded and squeezed me while I squeezed him. I leaned down, threw my mass of curls over his head, his chest and kissed him sweetly and then deeper
, rolling my hips over his, my tongue, licking into his mouth. I was getting slicker and wetter and he was rock hard. He broke the kiss.

“Sit up.” He said. I sat up, looked up at him questioningly and raised my eyebrows.

“What?” I whispered.

“I need to see your eyes this time when I enter you, slowly, slowly.” He fisted himself, stroked me with his tip and spread my inner lips. He
started to ease in slowly, oh so slowly. I was ready to slam into him to end the torture and he sensed it. “No, don’t.” He placed a hand on my hip and squeezed to settle me down while he slowly, painfully slowly breached my inner depths. “You’re so tight, so hot and wet and you feel so good, too good and I want to slam into you desperately but I’m using every ounce of self control I have to love you slowly” I strained to accept all of him and  then all I could do was close my eyes. “NO! Don’t do that.” He shouted and I jumped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. I just don’t want you to close your eyes. I want to see you, all of you when I’m buried in you deep.” I began to move and find a rhythm and he closed his eyes.

“NO! Don’t do that! I shouted.

“Sorry.” His eyes flew open.

“I want to see you to
o when you come. Brandon, I have to move, can I move now?” He splayed his fingers across my hips and squeezed again. I slid up and off him slowly, oh so slowly, once, twice, and then once more and his hands rocked my hips back and forth, back and forth. I was nothing more than hot liquid sensation and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“No, don’t do that!” He whispered this time. I opened my eyes again, reached for his fingers,
and sucked them into my mouth, locking my eyes on his. He jacked his hips up and forward while I slid off him and slammed down onto him, still sucking his fingers harder and deeper into my mouth.

“Ah, shit, Laurel…that’s it…I’m coming…now!” He closed his eyes.

“No, don’t do that!” This time I yelled after I withdrew his fingers placed them on my clit and told him to squeeze. He squeezed. I rocked forward harder and faster, harder and faster, feeling my power building, swirling, looking deeply into his eyes feeling his hot liquid release course through my inner depths and I was lost, gone, my hands in my own hair, slamming into him and crying out, “You feel so good, please make me feel good Brandon, make me feel loved,” and with that I exploded.

“Sometimes leftover spaghetti and meatballs is better the second time around. It has time to marinate and the starches have time to absorb all the sweetness and acidity of the gravy. Man, however, cannot live on love alone. We were starving and the tent was becoming stifling hot. We decided to build a fire and throw hamburger meat wrapped in aluminum foil directly into the fire. What a fun way to eat! Brandon and I sat on a blanket, wrapped in a blanket wearing bathing suits and sweatshirts listening to the music of the ocean and the night and looking at the stars and hearing the faint hiss and crackle of the campfire. He got up to tend to the fire and turned around to look at me.

“You look lost in thought. What’s on your mind? Me, I hope.
” He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me so earnestly he reminded me of my little Jakie, which then gave me a pang of guilt I quickly suffocated. I was good at suffocating feelings. I had a lot of practice.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know.
..so much is swirling through my head right now.” I bit my lip and decided to go for it. “Well, if you must know, I’m wondering if you’re a Victoria’s Secret kinda guy or if you like cotton underwear?” I smiled to myself and crossed my fingers and thanked God I was still laying on the blanket so he wouldn’t see my face. He out right guffawed.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” He threw his head back and laughed again.

“I don’t know… a question I want an answer to.” I sounded miffed and lifted only my head off the blanket to look at him swung my feet back and forth and raised my eyebrows waiting for his reply. “I’m waiting.”

“Okay, well, if you have to know. I hate lacy underwear. I’m a plain, simple guy. I like my women in cotton Hanes underwear and mismatched too. Now, to me that’s sexy as
all hell. The mismatch I mean. But if you’re into the lace stuff I can handle it. I have a tendency to tear it though, which always makes me feel bad because I know how expensive it is. For you, though, I’d put up with it.”