5 comments/ 14909 views/ 6 favorites The Long Frost By: jehoram This is a story of two attempts at sexual healing. One failed, but the other succeeded. And in the end, it was the healer who was healed. In 1975, my wife Gloria told me she wanted a divorce after two years of a childless marriage. An old high-school flame of hers had returned from a stint in the Army and come back to town the previous year. It didn't take long before she told me that she'd fallen in love with him again, that she had begun an affair, and that she wanted to marry him. When Gloria asked for the separation, I was devastated. As fate would have it, I'd lost my job as an electronics salesman about two months before, so the blow hit doubly hard. I no longer had a family or a job in New Haven, only bitter memories. Wishing to make a new start in my life, I moved to North Granby, a smaller town to the north, where I got a room in a big old farmhouse out in the countryside that some hippie-types were renovating. The rent was cheap, which was good because I was supporting myself on minimum-wage jobs at the time. It was there that I received a letter from a woman I had known ten years before. Lynette had heard about my separation, and told me that if there was anything she could do, all I had to do was ask. I'd been known Lynette since she was a teenager, but she'd really shown no romantic interest in me, despite a friendship that was warm and deep. So we kept our relationship light. She was one of those girls with a twenty-five-year-old mind in a fifteen-year-old body, with an intellect and range of interests that she did not share with any of the girls in her age group. So she had gone through high school always feeling left out, ostracized by her classmates. She confessed this loneliness to me, and I remember many evenings when I would hold her in my arms as she wept in anger and frustration. I finally got to see her sensual side when we went to a science-fiction convention together, the summer after she graduated from high school. She was staying in a hotel room she was sharing with some girlfriends, and I was the houseguest of a high-school classmate who was attending college in that city. Despite our separate sleeping arrangements, the freewheeling nature of sci-fi conventions allowed us to get some serious necking in, at one of the hotel's lobbies. It wasn't able to go much farther than my opening the front of her blouse and sliding her bra up to expose her beautiful little titties, and gently fondling and kissing them. Given the public nature of our trysting, even this activity proved to be too far outside her comfort zone, so we broke it off, buttoned up, and re-joined the party. That was as far as we'd ever gotten at that point, but I wondered afterward what might have developed had we had more privacy. I was convinced that she had deeper feelings for me than she was able to admit, and lacked only the proper circumstances to make them known. Certainly, I meant a lot to her, because she wrote me a long letter plainly expressing the emotional storms of her teenage years and praising the safe harbor she'd found in my arms. She'd taken considerable trouble, not only in the writing but in the calligraphy she inscribed it with. She used an intricate, spidery style with long extenders, giving it the sort of elegance you see in eighteenth-century documents. The border consisted of flowers hand-drawn with a fine-tipped pen. I saved that letter, and have it to this day. She had a quality that I'd seen in very few other women, then or afterward. She seemed extraordinarily graceful to me. Every move she made seemed like a dance. She seemed to flow from place to place; I could swear she trailed fire behind her, radiating warmth everywhere she went. She was petite in every way. Even at twenty, she could have passed for a thirteen-year-old. She had dark brown hair that went down to the small of her back. An inch or two over five feet tall, she was a full head shorter than I was, and I loved to rest my chin on her head as we stood and hugged each other. She wore glasses, but they couldn't hide the beauty of her eyes, a light hazel framed by long dark lashes that needed no mascara. I thought she was the perfect woman. Even after we'd parted ways and I eventually married Gloria (who, it turned out, bore a striking physical similarity to Lynette), she was always in the back of my mind, and we had kept in touch. So, now that my marriage was crumbling, it seemed natural that I would turn to her for help. She was a graduate student at a divinity school in the Boston area, and she invited me up the following Saturday. It would be a good time, because her roommate would be gone that evening, and we'd have the place to ourselves. I drove to Boston and was at her door by three o'clock. We hugged and she invited me up to her dorm room, where we chatted and "caught up" on each other's lives. When we got hungry, we went out to a local restaurant for dinner. After we returned, the conversation naturally turned to the reasons for my visit. I described the problems with the marriage, the reasons why it might have failed, and my loneliness since the break-up. At some point, I began to cry, and she got up, sat on my lap, and hugged me. It was a curious reversal of the way our relationship started. Now it was I who was doing the weeping, and she the consoling. At this point, it must have entered her mind that the best thing she could do for my bruised masculinity was to reassure me that I was still desirable to women. Perhaps she had also wondered what it would be like to bed me, after the many years of unrequited love. At any rate, I found myself being disrobed and led to her bed. She stripped naked herself, and I could at last see the full beauty of the body I'd dreamed of for years. Her small breasts, with light pink areolas the size of nickels and nubbins of nipples, were at that moment the most beautiful things I'd seen, and I could not keep my lips off them. Her arms and legs were slender, her hips narrow, and her skin as soft as satin. I kissed her breasts, and then her belly, and then her pussy with its wisps of fine dark hair. She stroked my cock to hardness, and invited me in. I remember her reassuring me that it wouldn't hurt, since she was no longer a virgin, and that she was on the pill, so that I needn't worry about her getting pregnant. She also said that she was having trouble lubricating, and found some Vaseline to cover my cock with. Then she let me enter her, and all my virility seemed to come flooding back to me. I wept again, this time for joy, and she held me as I wept. I cannot say that I was much of a lover that night. I was half out of my mind with grief and loneliness, and it was she who was guiding me, and not I guiding her. I can only remember cumming with alarming speed, without taking much cognizance of what her state of arousal was. I was not making love as a sane man should, but as a man drowning in turbulent waters, desperate for a helping hand. She didn't climax, but she said that it was all right, that it was my state of mind that was important that night, not hers. The next morning, we made love again, a little more relaxed this time, and then went out for some breakfast. At a nearby variety store, she bought me a pair of thick knee-length socks, saying that she'd found them comfortable. "Your feet were cold last night," she said. "Think of these as me, keeping you warm." I kissed her and then drove home, happier than I'd been in months. But any fantasies I'd had about continuing the relationship were destroyed when we next met. It was at her parents' house, where she would be staying over the Christmas holidays. I would drive over just after New Year's Day, stay overnight there, and drive her back to Boston. When I got there, I found out that she'd just had a huge argument with her parents, who were dead set against her decision to become a minister. Her nerves still on edge, she took me aside and explained that what had happened the last time we met was something that was never going to be repeated. It had all been a big mistake, she said. She saw no future in our becoming lovers. Yes, I could remain a friend, but it would never go further than that. We had reached the point where our lives would diverge forever, because our destinies were not the same. I was heartbroken. With these few words, Lynette had taken me back to that awful night when Gloria asked me for a divorce, and the blackness had descended for the first time. I didn't tell her how shocked I was, since I wasn't at that point even ready to admit it to myself, and I didn't want to add to her level of stress. I mumbled something to the effect that it was all right, that I understood, that I was perfectly happy to let it happen the way she wanted. I stayed the night in the guest bedroom, and then drove her back to Boston the next day. I dropped her off at her dorm, drove back to North Granby, and had a nervous breakdown. I went to bed, and didn't get up for two days. The phone would ring, but it seemed to have no importance to me, so I did not answer it. I watched the morning sun come through the shades of my bedroom, turn into afternoon sun, then fade to dark, while I lay there motionless. For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely alone. After a while, though, I came around. I started eating again. I answered the phone. On my days off, I would go down to a small river that ran by the farmhouse, where I read Saint Augustine and Teilhard de Chardin and George Gurdjieff on the sunny riverbank as the waters burbled and the bees buzzed around me. In time, and in the peace I found sitting by the river, I found myself able to forgive Lynette for the trauma to which she, in all innocence and with the very best of intentions, had inflicted on me. I still could not bring myself to see her again; I couldn't assure myself that her presence wouldn't send me once more spiraling downward. We kept in touch, mostly through mutual friends, and it was from one of them that I learned that she'd begun a serious relationship with a minister. Later on, I heard she'd gotten married, whether to that person or another I never learned. Many, many years later, I heard that she'd gotten a divorce and was now single again, an ordained minister leading her own congregation in Richmond and active in inter-faith organizations. My own path led me to Europe, and then to the Midwest, where I married again. My wife gave me thirty wonderful years and three beautiful children before pancreatic cancer took her from me. In the months following her funeral, my thoughts turned again to Lynette, and I fantasized now of going back to the East Coast and tracking down the church where she worked, just to sit in the pews and observe her, without letting her know that I was there. I wanted to see if she was happy. But I was still reluctant to meet her again in the flesh, because I didn't know if, even after thirty-five years, I was strong enough to handle the emotions I knew would storm through me. And above all, if she was happy now, how would my presence do anything but threaten that happiness? I was soon to find the answers to all these questions. It happened like this: Not long ago, I was reading the newspaper when my eye happened to catch a story about an upcoming religious convention in Chicago, not far from where I lived. I had just retired from a civil service job and had a lot of time free, so I thought about attending it. It was to be a large-interfaith production, featuring speakers from all over the United States, representing all the mainstream faiths. As somebody who had always been active in my own church's interfaith program, I decided that this might be worth looking into, so I continued to read. If I hadn't kept reading the story, I would never have come across her name, but there it was: Lynette. She would be representing her church and speaking on the interfaith coalitions in her town and the work they were doing. My mind was in a swirl. All the memories of our relationship came back to me, all the joy, all the pain, all the disappointment. Most of all, it was the feeling that something had been left undone and unresolved. I had so much to say to her, yet no way to say it. I attended the conference. Sitting in the back, I listened to Lynette's speech. She hadn't changed much, except that the additional years had put about twenty pounds onto her body and some gray into her hair. Her glasses frames had changed, too, from the "Granny glasses" so popular in the seventies to a contemporary European style that somehow made her look more scholarly. But she still obviously had the fierce intelligence and the grace in her movements that had endeared her to me. The eloquence of her speech left the audience spellbound, and when she finished, the applause was thunderous. I made some inquiries about meeting her, with an aim to perhaps taking her out to dinner. But when I asked the conference staff, they told me that it was impossible. Schedules had been worked out long in advance, arrangements had been made. "Well, then," I asked. "Is it possible for me to at least get a message to her?" A man whose name tag identified him as "Mr. Beckner" said that he would try, but that there would be no guarantees. If I could provide a letter of introduction, he said, that might smooth the path a bit. It was obvious that they were trying to protect the conference participants from undue exposure to people like the ones picketing the conference center outside, with placards denouncing the presence of Muslim and Sikh delegations at the conference. It was amazing how an event focusing on religious tolerance could provoke so much intolerance, but there it was. I went to the conference center's office and bummed a large plain manila envelope from one of the office aides. I had brought with me the letter that Lynette had written for me, which she'd personally calligraphed with a careful and graceful hand on heavy paper. I took it out of my briefcase and slipped it into the envelope. I sealed it and wrote Lynette's name on it, along with the number of my cell phone and a note: "Text me if you can." Then I sought out Mr. Beckner and gave him the envelope. "Here's that letter of introduction you asked for. I'd be very grateful if you could get it to her." "Very good, sir," he replied. I'll do what I can." With that, he took the envelope and disappeared down the corridor. Well, that's that, I thought. If she wants to contact me, she has the information. If, on the other hand, she wants nothing more to do with me, then she can keep the letter, and I can close that part of my life forever. Everything was now up to her. I attended a few more lectures and seminars, and when the day's events had concluded at about eight, I checked my phone. No messages. I went to a nearby restaurant I knew, and had dinner. I gave my phone one more check. And there it was, a single message, which read: "10 PM Rm 1207 Hyatt Pls come" I stared at the display and blinked. She'd gotten the envelope. Now it was up to me. I'd made the first move, and she'd responded. Did I have the courage to follow up on it? Was I ready for what I would find? There was only one way to find out. So I made my way to the Hyatt, which was only a few blocks from the restaurant. I entered the lobby and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. Room 1207, down and to the left. I arrived at the door and knocked. It opened, and there she was. She was wearing a loose wool sweater and knee-length skirt, exposing a lower leg covered in black nylons. She wore no shoes. She stared at me for a moment, taking me in, recording the changes that thirty-five years had wrought in me. We hugged, carefully. I could not read the message it conveyed. It wasn't passion. It might not even have been warmth. It suddenly occurred to me: she's as nervous about this reunion as I was. "I got your envelope at eight, right after the last seminar. I ended up chairing it, and they didn't want to interrupt me. I opened it, and there was the letter, and I didn't know what to think. I thought, where did this come from? How did you get it? And then I realized that you were the one I gave it to ... what, forty years ago?" "About that. It's good to see you again, Lynette. Thank you for the invitation." "How could I not? It's been ... thirty-five years? ... since I last saw you. Come in, have a seat. I have this bottle of wine. Room service. You can't believe what they charge for it, and the Church isn't paying for it. But I figured that this was a special occasion." There was a sofa and an easy chair in the room. I took my place on the sofa and watched her as she, with the grace I'd known so well, eased the cork out of the bottle and poured us each a glass. Then she sat down on the easy chair, and we chatted. She asked me to fill her in on my life. Eventually, we got around to that day at her parents' house, when we said goodbye to each other. "You know," she said, "I don't think I ended that well. I'm sorry." "No need to apologize. You did the best you could. I don't think you knew how fragile my state of mind was. I didn't want to let you know." "Fragile in what way?" she asked. So I told her about the nervous breakdown, and how she had precipitated it. I told her about the long days of reading theology on the banks of the river, of my gradual re-conquest of my soul. I said that I was there not only to renew our friendship, but to test myself, to see how much I had really healed from the pain she'd caused me. She didn't say a word. She sat on the chair, legs pressed together, hands clasped on her lap, leaning forward. She stared into my eyes as I spoke, never looking away or down, as if she wanted to catch every nuance of my facial expressions. When I paused, she nodded, as if to ask me to go on. When the whole story was finished, I sat back and we regarded each other in silence. "I didn't know," she said finally. "You told me about how you recovered from your divorce through prayer and reading and meditation, but I had no idea that it was really me you were recovering from. I'm so sorry. I really didn't know." "Of course you didn't. I didn't tell you. Would it have made a difference if I did?" "Maybe. It was so long ago. I don't know. I remember telling you that I didn't want to be your lover. I do remember that. I remember your reaction. I recall that you didn't seem too upset over it. I thought it was acceptance, just the usual disappointment of a man who realized that he wasn't going to get into my pants after all. Now I realize that it was shock that made you so quiet about it. Believe me, I didn't know how hard the blow was to you." "I wanted to protect you, Lynette. Remember those times you sat in my lap, in that very room, and cried about how lonely you were? I felt your pain, more deeply maybe than you knew. I didn't want to bring you more." She was quiet for a moment, and then spoke again. "In retrospect, I remember how mature I seemed to be at that stage of my life ... how mature I thought I was. But in many ways, I was still a very young, very silly girl. If I'd been more experienced, I might have caught the signs. It's odd ... I've done many, many sessions of counseling for my congregation, and I've learned so much over the years about relationships and how they go wrong. If only I'd known then what I know now!" "I gather that your history of relationships wasn't that smooth. You got married, had a divorce..." "Oh, that. Yes, I did. Talk about being young and foolish! I fell for a minister in the first church I worked at after my graduation. We had a wonderful courtship, and we got married, and were expecting a baby when I found out that he'd been having affairs. Not just when we were married, but when we were courting, too. The Long Frost "I confronted him. He told me that he thought of himself as one of those Old Testament patriarchs who couldn't be confined to a relationship with just one woman. He actually asked me to let him move the other woman into the house, to be his 'second wife!' I told him to get lost. I screamed at him, I threw things, I just lost it altogether. "That's when I had my own nervous breakdown. He left me. I miscarried. The ladies of the church helped me through it. When the news of his philandering became public knowledge, he was fired. He left for some place in New Mexico or Arizona, I heard later. Some little town where they needed a pastor, no questions asked. For all I know, he's there to this day. "But I felt horribly used, damaged. I didn't want anybody to touch me. It's funny... I tried to call you. I actually picked up the phone and called the number for that farmhouse in Connecticut where you used to live. Whoever answered it told me that you hadn't lived there in years, that you'd gone to live in Europe somewhere." It was true. I'd finally gotten a job in my old field that paid some money, working for a company with an office in London. I worked in that office for three years. Since she didn't know the company's name, she had no way to reach me. "But that turned out to be a good thing," she said. "I remembered your example, of how you'd recovered from your own divorce by learning to rely on yourself again. I thought that if you could do that, I could do that. How ironic! My impression of you as a strong, independent spirit was what guided me, and now I know how wrong that impression was!" "No, it wasn't. Maybe it was wrong that winter, but over the years, I have become that person." "Yes. Remember what I told you that night when you came to visit me at my school, when we made love? I told you that you didn't need me to heal you, that you yourself were the best healer and teacher you could hope to find." With that, she got up, grabbed my arm, and gave it a little squeeze. "That's another thing I have to apologize for," I said. "I wasn't myself that night. I'm really a much better lover than that. I was half out of myself with fear and guilt and grief. You were throwing me a life preserver, and I was too intent on staying afloat to pay much attention to the person at the other end of the rope." She smiled. "Don't worry. I think I understood that much, even as clueless as I was. May I sit next to you on the couch?" "Please do. I won't bite." She sat down next to me and embraced me. We held each other that way for a long time. I could gradually feel the tension dissolve as she eased into my embrace, and the hug turned into a snuggle. Then she began to cry. "What's wrong?" I said. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong." "No, tell me." "I missed this. So much. The hug. I haven't been hugged like this in years and years. I never let myself. I told ... I told myself that it wasn't worth the pain. I told myself that I would learn to live without that need. Most of all, I could never trust any man again, not the way I'd trusted you. I was so wrong... please hug me. Please. Just hold me." I kissed her and stroked her hair, still soft and long although now shot with silver, instead of the solid dark brown of her youth. I took off her glasses and laid them on the table next to the sofa. She cried for a little longer and I whispered reassurances into her ear. What happened next surprised me. She suddenly hugged harder, crushing her body into mine, and kissed me fiercely, a lover's kiss. "Lynette," I said. "Don't speak. Just kiss me." So we kissed some more, locked in our embrace. I kissed her neck, stroked her back, then her legs. I slipped a hand under her sweater, and found bare skin there. Sliding my hand upward, I encountered a brassiere strap. I stopped there, waiting for some sign of permission to continue. She looked up at me questioningly. "Lynette," I said. "Are you comfortable with this?" She closed her eyes, and smiled. "Oh, yes. Don't stop." "What's going on here?" "It's my turn to test myself. To see how much I've healed. I want to see if I can still put my trust in somebody who's never failed in that trust. I want to do this. Please?" Thus reassured, I slipped my hand under her bra strap and stroked the length of her back. My other hand slipped underneath her skirt, and I reveled in the feel of the smooth nylon on her leg. Her kissing became more passionate. "May I take off your sweater?" She stopped. Had I gone too far? "Will you be good to me?" "Do you mean, will I hurt you? I would never hurt you, Lynette. Trust me." "I trust you," she said. "It's been so long since I've trusted anybody. But I trust you." She then allowed me to pull the sweater off over her head. "You are beautiful," I said as I stroked the cup of her bra. "You always were. You were my ideal woman." "Am I still, even with a few extra pounds and thicker thighs?" "Even more so now. I'm old enough to know that your kind of beauty ages like fine wine." "Then I'll let you take my bra off, too." And she took my hands off her bra cups and unhooked the back. I lifted the cups, and there her breasts were, larger and lower than they were when I last saw them, but just as enticing with their tiny pink nipples. I felt my cock stir at the sight. I lifted each one and kissed it tenderly, flicking the nipple with my tongue and gently sucking. Her breathing became slower, deeper. "Did you know that these breasts were the first I'd ever seen, ever kissed? Remember that day in the hotel lobby?" "At the WorldCon? Yes, I do! We were so wicked! Doing that in public!" She chuckled, and I kissed her breasts again. "You know, I've always thought I owed you an orgasm," I said. "You gave me two of them that weekend in your dorm room, and got nothing in return." "I got cuddles in return. That was sweet. I didn't expect more." "But you deserved more. I've owed you that debt for thirty-five years, and I'd like to pay it tonight." She took my hands off her breasts. "I don't know if I could accept it." "You mean, because of your position with the church? Or is there somebody else?" "No. There isn't anybody else, and I don't care what the church thinks. But I haven't had an orgasm in years. I don't know if I still can. I've never had that level of trust with anybody. Even when I was playing with myself, I never let myself get more than halfway aroused. It's strange. I've counseled lots of women about not getting hung up over sex, and to just let it happen if the circumstances were right and if she felt okay with it. I told them that sex was God's gift to the human race, that He wanted us to use it well and wisely to enrich our lives. But I could never follow my own advice." She paused for a minute. "And I always had trouble climaxing. I disappointed my husband often, and had to learn to fake an orgasm to get him to stop. I hated that. It was lying to him, in a way. But here's another thing: if we make love and I couldn't climax, would I hurt you again, even now? Would you think less of me as a woman? Less of yourself as a man?" "Let me put my offer another way, then. Let me thank you by allowing me to pleasure you. You don't have to climax, you just have to relax, and 'let it happen,' as you put it. Can you do that? Will you try? Please?" She smiled. "I can try. Now how do we do this?" "First, we get naked," I laughed. "That shouldn't be a big thing ... we've seen each other naked before. Better still, let me undress you." I knelt before her and, while kissing her bare midriff, unfastened the belt on her skirt and pulled it down. Next came her panty hose, which I rolled down her leg and pulled off her feet as she lifted them. She wore no-nonsense white panties underneath; the crotch was dry. "You are still beautiful, dear," I said. "Just stand there and let me look at you as I undress." "No. Let me undress you." And she did, starting with my shoes, then my socks. She unbuttoned my shirt, slipped it off. I was wearing no undershirt. She hugged me, bare chest against bare chest, for a few minutes. I gave her the time, knowing that she needed to achieve intimacy by slow degrees after her long frost. Then I felt her fumble at my belt and un-clasp it. She unzipped the fly, and my pants dropped to the floor. She could see my cock tenting the light cotton boxer shorts I wore. "Hug me again," she said. I pulled her close to me and we hugged that way for a while, allowing her go get used to the sensation of my now erect cock pressing at her sex through two layers of fabric. Then her body slid down mine as she knelt, and pulled my shorts down. She hugged me again, feeling my cock between her breasts. I stepped out of my shorts and stood before her nude. "Do you want to take off my panties now?" Her voice trembled, as if she wasn't yet ready for that stage. "No. Let's lie on the bed and let our bodies become re-acquainted. When you feel that you're ready for the next step, you can take them off yourself, to let me know. Remember that last time, you were there for me. This time, I'm here for you. "First let me pee. Do you want me to shower, too? I showered this morning." "Please don't. You smell just fine. You smell like a woman should smell, a little sweaty and musky. Women pay good money to smell like that, and you already do." With that, she gave me a quick smile and another hug and disappeared into the bathroom. I used the opportunity to soften the room lights, turn down the bedcovers, and put glasses of water and wine on the nightstand. My erection had subsided enough so that when she returned, I could use the bathroom myself, and so I excused myself. I relieved myself, and then looked at the bottles of sample-sized cosmetic articles that lined one side of the washstand. I found what I was looking for: a small bottle of body oil. For the first time, I had an omen that I was on the right track, and that this night might end better than the last one did. When I returned, she was face down on the bed. I straddled her body, poured a little of the oil on, and began massaging her back, taking my time. I could gradually feel her relaxing, the tension of the moment subsiding. As I rubbed, I kissed, leaving no part untouched. I paid special attention to the inside of her thighs and the outside of her breasts. I slid a finger between her legs to caress her vulva through the cotton cloth, using the lightest of touches. Then my hands would move to her ass, then up her back, then down again. "When you're ready for more, just roll over," I said. Then the massage resumed. I gave her wet kisses down her spine, making her giggle, a sound that to me sounded like birds singing on a spring morning. I started rubbing harder, and she responded by sliding her body under my hands to increase the force. She pulled down her panties to expose more of her ass, and I kneaded the firm muscles of her buttocks. After a few more minutes of this, she rolled over and put her arms around my neck, dragging me down to her lips. I kissed her lips, her chin, her neck. As one arm was tucked behind her head, my other hand was stroking her vulva through the cloth of her panties, and caressing the now-exposed hair of her mons, in slow circles. My lips traveled downwards, to her collarbone, then her the creamy whiteness over her breasts. She grasped her breasts in her hands and squeezed them, kneaded them, brought the little nipples to hardness, and I sucked on them, one at a time. Her hands left her breasts to stroke the back of my head. And further downward I traveled, kissing her belly, her navel, and her mons. Then I began kissing her on the underside of the thighs, working up toward her crotch, then back down, then the other leg up to her crotch. I kissed her labia through her panties, tracing the crease with my tongue. "Do you want me to take them off?" she whispered. "Do you want to take them off?" I replied. "Yes. Yes, I do. Very much." So I got into a kneeling position as her legs came up, and she slipped the panties down her thighs, past her knees, and down her shins. She then tossed the panties onto the floor and spread her legs. "You're the first man to see this in thirty years." "Too long!" I said, and then pressed my lips to her sex. I kissed lightly, giving her the lightest of strokes with my tongue. I noticed that she still wasn't really lubricating, although her body language testified to her arousal. She noticed it, too, and began to apologize for it. "I'm so sorry. I was afraid of this. And now that I'm past menopause, it's even worse." "Relax," I said. "I've learned a trick or two." I went back to kissing her labia, but now I pinched the top of her slit together, putting pressure on her clitoral hood. I kneaded it gently and felt her respond to the clitoral stimulation. Meanwhile, I spit on my little finger and inserted it into her vagina, slowly, slowly, a millimeter at a time, using my saliva to reduce the friction. Soon she was wet enough to allow me to put my middle finger, repeating the process with lots of saliva. She responded by spreading her legs farther apart and moaning with pleasure. And so we spent the best part of the next hour, with me fondling her labia and gently finger-fucking her. At one point, she apologized for not being aroused more quickly. "You don't have to climax," I reassured her. "Just relax, and enjoy the sensations. Your mantra should be: There is no pressure. No pressure to perform, no pressure to climax." She gradually relaxed again and surrendered to the sensations. We had all the time in the world, and it seemed foolish to rush it. My own erection came and went, sometimes going soft entirely, then returning to stiffness as she responded with caresses of her own. As my finger made progress into her vagina, I licked at her slit, forcing my tongue into the pinched flesh at the top, seeking the underside of her clit. I found it, and gently pushed upward on it as I reduced the force of the pinch, allowing her clit to move inside its hood. The effect was dramatic. She suddenly bucked, and I knew that the sensations were overwhelming her. My finger inside her curled up as I searched for the roughness that indicated her G spot. I found it, and stroked it gently. "Oh, no! I've got to pee again!" she cried. "No, you don't. That's just another stage of your arousal. Let it happen. You're doing fine." I continued playing with her cunt, putting downward pressure on my finger as I continued to tickle her sensitive area. Then I focused my attention once more on her clit. She bucked again, and now I noticed that her juices began to flow, slowly at first, and then more profusely. I withdrew my finger, added another, then one more, fucking her with my fingers as my lips pulled on her inner labia. I next touched her clit with my tongue, flicked it rapidly, and with the full force of my tongue pushed it down into her flesh. That sent her over the edge, and she gave a sharp cry and ground her crotch against my fingers, trying to drive them deeper into her. Then she laughed, her belly shaking. I looked up at her body, now sweating and suffused with a flush that began at her breasts and spread downward to her belly. Her laughter turned to tears, then back to laughter again. "Oh, God! Oh, God! Hold me! Hold me!" I slid my body up hers, feeling her breasts slide under my chest, and gave her a hearty hug as I kissed her mouth. "Oh, God! Thank you! Thank you so much! It's been so long ... I've never come like that! I never knew I could! Oh, God!" She was laughing and crying all at the same time. I yearned to complete this moment by sliding my cock into her, but something was holding me back. I realized what it was ... I didn't want to spoil this moment, the moment she reclaimed her sexuality. I wanted her to savor it for a while longer. And she did. Her gasping-laughing-sobbing subsided, and she began to kiss me as I'd been kissing her, softly and tenderly. "So what's your secret?" she asked me. "No secret. Just patience. You did all the work, really. I just helped you along, at your own speed." "I didn't know I still had that passion inside me!" "You always had passion. You were passionate about your studies, your church, your social causes. Your friends. That was one of the first things I noticed about you, one of the things that made me fall in love with you. I wanted to see that passion in our sexual relationship, too. But that didn't happen." "No, it didn't. But I don't think that anybody -- you included, really -- ever took the time to bring it out. Tell me: do I always have to spend that much time getting in the mood?" "That's hard to say. But remember the mantra: no pressure. Take the time, for sure, but if it doesn't happen, the time wasn't wasted. Just make love to yourself the way you'd want others to make love to you. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Kind of like borrowing money, you know." She laughed, and then we resumed kissing. "Look what I mess I made," she said. "You've got my cum all over your face. Do I really taste like that?" "And it is delicious. If Ben and Jerry could make an ice cream flavor out of it, they couldn't keep it in stock." "You're so sweet to say that! Do you mean it?" "With all my heart. What else can I do for you now? I could eat your pussy all night, if you wanted me to." "No. I want you to cum, too. How would you like me to do that to you?" "I'd love to cum in you, in your pussy. Now that you're no longer fertile, that shouldn't be a problem, right?" "Considering that I haven't had a period in three years, I'd say the Baby Shop has closed down for good. Come on in!" "Do you want to be on top? You might have more control that way." "No. I want to feel your weight. I want you to fuck me hard. God, am I really saying that?" "Yes, you are, Reverend Lady. And I will do as thou commandest." With that, I positioned my cock at her entrance. "Are you ready?" She didn't answer, but only kissed me harder. I slid into her, and was able to give her only a dozen hard thrusts before I came. That was enough to get her off again, just a little, and she hugged me again as my limp cock slipped out of her. "I'm so sorry," I said. "I wanted it to be longer." "It was plenty long enough for me!" she laughed. "No, I mean how long I lasted. I wish I was younger." "I'm glad you're not younger! When you were younger, you couldn't have brought me off like that, could you?" "Well, I still feel bad about it. Let me make it up to you. Spread your legs again." She obeyed, and I proceeded to lap up my semen as it oozed from her cunt. She laughed as my tongue moved, and the laughter turned to panting, and the panting turned to squealing, and she came again, not as intensely as before, but enough to send her crying again for sheer pleasure. We cuddled again and dozed off. The telephone rang at seven; it was the wake-up call she'd left the night before. I kissed her again, but she was strangely silent, as though a barrier had once again sprung up while we slept. We showered together, now with an easy familiarity with each other's bodies. But when I cupped her vulva, she said, "Don't" and pushed my hand away. We went downstairs to the restaurant and I ordered breakfast for us. We ate in silence. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "Do you have second thoughts about last night?" "No. Yes. Yes and no. I mean, I'm glad that it happened, for you as well as for me. I have another seminar to participate in at nine, but I have to fly back to Richmond this afternoon. I don't know when I'll see you again." She sipped her coffee. "I didn't intend that it would go so far. Now, it just seems messy, as though it was some sort of one-night stand. As though you picked me up for some casual sex, or I picked you up ... I'm not sure." The Long Frost "Believe me, it was anything but casual on my part. But I never really intended that it would go that far, either. And I know that you have another life to lead, responsibilities to your church and your congregation. If that's the life you want to lead, then you should go back to it. I have no right to stand in your way." "Thanks," she said. "I wish ... I wish it were otherwise. I felt that I lost you, and got you back, and now I'm losing you again." "You know, I was going to say the same thing." "But you never lost me in the first place. Don't you realize that? If you had, you'd have gotten rid of that letter long ago. Instead, you kept it. I wish I'd saved something of yours to connect me with you. You know, I don't even have a picture of you! I'd thrown that all away when I got married, as though I was getting rid of all the craziness of the years before I found my husband and my vocation." "It's not that easy to throw away the past, Lynette." I was silent for a minute, trying to collect my thoughts. "Remember our last talk at your parents' house, when you told me that your life was going to diverge from mine? We've come to that point again, except that now I'm strong enough to let you go. I would like to stay in touch with you. That's your choice." "Thank you. I knew that, but it's good to hear you say it. But I'm thinking about something else. Once, long ago, I tried to give you your manhood back, and I ended up messing you up even more. Last night, you gave me my womanhood back. I'm stronger, too. I don't think you need to worry about me. You did just fine. But if you were to tell me a month later that you didn't want to be my lover anymore, I ask myself: how would I feel about that? I think I would grieve a little, but I'd get over it more easily than you did. I guess that's one of the advantages of age." "Well, when we last met, we were both in the first third of our lives. Now we're in the last third. What is old age good for, if not to give us some perspective?" She smiled again, even though she was starting to cry (and, to be frank, so was I). We got up, hugged briefly, and she left for her seminar. I paid the bill, and walked back to the parking garage where I'd left my car. I sent her a quick text message: "Remember the mantra. No pressure." When I got home, I noticed a plain manila envelope in my briefcase. In it was the letter; she'd slipped it back in there at some point when I was sleeping, or maybe when I was in the bathroom that night. At first, assuming the worst as I always do, I took the return of that keepsake as a sign that she no longer wished me in her life, that she wanted to put all of that behind her for the last time. But then I realized that I'd told her about my thoughts when I put it into that borrowed envelope and sent it off to her: that if she kept it without responding to it, that would be the sign that she wished to break communication for ever. By returning it to me, she was saying "Keep me in your life." I sat there in my living room for a long time, holding the letter and thinking about the previous night. I cried softly, and they were not the tears of sadness and loss, but of joy and affection. The next day, I sent her a package Priority Mail. Inside was a pair of thick knee-length socks. I have some time, and some money. Maybe I'll travel east, and visit her again. This time, I will be strong enough. And so will she.