Brynn

 

Do I want to stop? No.

Am I a little disappointed not to feel him huge and bare inside me? Yes.

Did I actually consider letting him come inside me and get me pregnant so we’d never be free of each other? Absolutely.

But . . . do I want to stop? Absolutely not.

“No,” I say, sitting up behind him. I spread my legs and press my front flush against his back, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his torso. I lay my cheek against his warm, strong back and say, “That’s the thing, Cass. I never want to stop.”

I know he’s been holding his breath because his lungs release in a sigh of relief.

“Then help me with this,” he says, reaching for the box of condoms and putting a thin foil packet between my fingers.

“Turn around.”

I press a kiss to his back and untangle my legs from his body as he shifts on the bed to face me. His cock stands tall and hard, and my breath catches when I consider that it’s been over two years since I’ve had sex. I gulp softly and hope that he’s slow and gentle, or that my body remembers how to do this. I don’t want it to hurt. That said, I’m also hoping that the blow job I gave Cass a few minutes ago helps him last because I’ve been in a state of intense arousal for days, and I’m dying for release.

I stare into his eyes as I raise the packet to my mouth and bite it open with my teeth. Peeling the halves away, I pull out the condom and look back up at him. “Ready?”

For a split second, I wonder if we should talk for a few minutes before he loses his virginity to me, but one look in his eyes tells me that the time for talking is over. This is happening. As soon as possible. And we’re both more than ready.

He pulls my hand to his cock.

I pinch the tip of the condom and cover the strong, slick crest of his erection with latex, using my fingers to roll the sheath over his straining skin.

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” I say, placing my hands on his shoulders to sit on his lap, positioning myself over him, “but, Cassidy, I lo—”

“I know,” he says, his voice an urgent and strangled whisper as he cuts me off. “And I want you to know that if things were different for me, Brynn . . . if they were different, I swear . . . ”

His voice trails off as I lower my body onto his, impaling myself on his throbbing sex with a sharp gasp, followed by a blissful sigh. He is big inside me—thick and hot—but I stretch to accommodate him, and we are an exquisite fit. I don’t know how he has this much self-control, but his eyes remain open the entire time, thin circles of blue and green framing wide black pupils as he willingly spears me, making me his, if not forever, then definitely for now.

“You are . . .,” he murmurs breathily, moving his hips up experimentally as his tongue darts out to wet his lips, “the greatest . . . treasure . . . of my entire life.”

Tears collect in my eyes, gathering until his face is a beautiful blur and I feel them course down my cheeks. These words are dear to me, so beloved, in fact, that I clench my muscles around him as hard as I can, willing him deeper, wanting him as close to me as he can possibly be. I wrap my arms around his neck, rocking into him, pressing my breasts against him as he thrusts up again.

I am crying and I am laughing at once as he finds a rhythm. To feel such profound love for him in my heart and to feel him, hot and pulsing, deep within me, has my climax speeding up, drawing near with every pump of his hips. His erection massages the walls of my sex with every thrust, and I whimper close to his ear, biting blindly until the soft flesh of his lobe is between my teeth. He gasps, then groans, the sound deep and heavy. His hands clasp my hips firmly, careful to avoid my injuries, as he thrusts up within me.

He is panting against my throat, and I suck on his ear before releasing it. I skim my lips over the smooth skin of his cheek to his mouth, demanding his lips with mine, shifting my hands to cradle the back of his skull and spreading my fingers through his hair.

“I want this,” I whisper in a breathless rush, leaning back to look into his eyes just before my orgasm crashes around me. “All I want . . . all I w-want, Cassidy . . . is you.”

I scream in pleasure, tight, frenetic contractions starting in my sex and spreading out all over my body, making me shudder against him as he thrusts up inside me again and again, faster and faster. I am floating. I am limp. I only exist because of the man making passionate love to me.

“Brynn!” he cries, his arms clasping me to him like I am his salvation, his only savior, and he calls out my name like it is the only prayer that has ever existed, ever mattered. “Brynn! Brynn! Bryyyyyyyyyyyynn!” And then he adds, his voice ragged and destroyed: “GOD, PLEEEEASE!”

A desperate plea.

An anguished, almost despairing entreaty.

I don’t know why he screams in supplication to God, maybe for the imminent release that he’s never known before this moment. I only know that there is me and there is Cass and there must be God too because only God could have imagined our unlikely pairing, because only a God who loves us could have led us to each other.

His body jerks sharply against mine with a sob, before the contractions inside me, filling the condom, become pulsing waves. His forehead falls forward, resting on my shoulder, his lips brushing against my throat mindlessly, instinctively.

We are so close, we are one person, our hearts pounding against each other, our bodies still shuddering, though we clutch one another fiercely, desperately, still intimately joined together. He takes a deep, ragged breath, then groans against my sweaty neck, his breath hot.

I have known love in my life, but I have never felt like this before, and I never want to leave the sanctuary of Cassidy’s arms.

I press my lips to his neck and close my eyes.

I love this man, and I am his treasure.

I must figure out, in the days ahead, how to keep us together.

It’s the only thing that matters now.

***

A week goes by in the blink of an eye.

A happy week goes by even faster than that.

When I was in college, I kept a diary, and as I longed for whatever boy my heart had seized on, my entries were steady, many, and verbose. But when I reread those diaries, years later, I noticed a trend. I could tell the moment he looked my way or asked me out because the entries would cease. During those times, I was too busy to write. I was too happy to pause and evaluate my life in any real way because I’d gotten what I wanted the most and was walking on air for a while.

But sooner or later, something would pull me back down to earth, and I’d return to my diary because real life, blunt and heavy, had reemerged. We recognize certain days as the happiest, after all, only because we have something else to compare them with. And because they are finite.

Somehow able to suspend my sadness about our eventual separation, I have lived in the moment this week with Cassidy, and these precious days have been the happiest of my life.

We have had sex in my bed and in his.

On the couch and on the coffee table.

In the outdoor shower under the stars.

Wrapped up in a blanket on Brynn’s Rock, beside Harrington Pond.

We’ve loved each other’s bodies well, reaching for one another at any moment, at all moments, wrapped up around one another until it is impossible to tell where he ends and I begin.

We have slept tangled together every night, our dreams mingling, our breath shared, clasping each other until dawn.

We’ve gardened and collected eggs and boiled water to wash our clothes.

Our mothers sang the Beatles to us as children, and we sing the same songs to each other while Cass thrums his guitar, and we watch the orange sparks of a campfire ascend to heaven.

He’s rocked me to sleep while the cicadas chirp their lullaby.

And I’ve traced the peaks and valleys of his face while he sleeps peacefully beside me.

All the while, we’ve ignored the ticking down of the days, letting one run into another, into another. Almost by tacit agreement, we’ve managed not to discuss leaving each other. I wonder, sometimes, if it’s slipped his mind. Maybe he hopes it’s slipped mine too.

But just as in college, real life always intrudes eventually. My happy days come to a crashing halt on the morning of July 18. The only way I know that it’s July 18 is because my period is like clockwork. When it arrives, I know the date and am suddenly unable to ignore it.

There are two days until July 20, our agreed-on farewell.

If I mean to keep my promise to Cassidy, we have only forty-eight hours left together.

He is asleep in my bed, naked in the half-light of dawn while I sit on the toilet, staring down at the pink streaks on the toilet paper.

I love him, and I am certain he loves me, though neither of us has said the actual words. I straighten my back. Certainly we will figure out a way to stay together, won’t we? What we have is special—we need to give it a chance. Things like where we live or my job or his dislike of society don’t matter as much as our feelings for each other, do they? They shouldn’t. They can’t.

And yet, I remember that he only acquiesced to a relationship with me when I made it clear that it would be temporary and devoid of communicated feelings.

But would he give me up now? After so many perfect hours in each other’s arms? It breaks my heart to think he would, but another question crowds that one out: are you ready to give up the life you had before you knew Cassidy?

Yes, I think resolutely. I love him. Of course I would give up anything to be with him. I will sell my house. I will pack up my favorite clothes, put Milo in his carrier, and return to Maine. Return to Cass. I can make a life here. I can be happy here as long as I’m with Cassidy. Right?

Except . . .

I wipe again, then ball up some toilet paper and slip back into my bedroom, taking a fresh pair of underwear from the bureau and padding the crotch with tissue before pulling them on. I glance at Cassidy, who snores softly, then take a blanket from the foot of the bed and wrap it around my bare shoulders. I slip out the front door and sit in my favorite rocking chair, watching the sun rise over Katahdin and twisting the leather bracelet on my wrist.

Except what, Brynn?

Except . . .

I miss some of my creature comforts, like my cell phone and satellite TV. I miss plentiful electricity that doesn’t depend on sunny days, a generator, or a propane tank, and unlimited hot running water that doesn’t have to be boiled first.

I miss being able to walk down the street to the market, and putting a load of clothes in a dryer and having them ready in an hour. I miss movies at theaters. I miss the internet. I miss choosing what kind of music I want to listen to and having it at my fingertips. I miss Amazon Prime. I miss takeout.

I don’t like my thoughts. I don’t want them, but they continue.

Though Cassidy is a capable paramedic, his mother died out here without medical care. What if something happened to one of us and we couldn’t get to a hospital in time? What if we had a child and the child got sick? Would I ever forgive myself if that child died because we had chosen a lifestyle that imperiled us all?

I huddle into the chair and pull the blanket tighter because daydreams are lovely, uncomplicated things and crashing back to earth hurts.

Are you really ready to give up your life?

It’s a question I ponder as I stir our clothes in a cauldron of boiling water after lunch, while I let them cool, and when I am hanging them on a clothesline one by one.

It nags at me while I am cranking the toilet later in the day and taking the refuse to the fertilizer pile.

It pops up again when I peruse Cassidy’s books before dinner, already knowing the collection by heart.

But when I watch him cutting wood, and talking gently to Annie, and replacing a rotted board on the side of the barn, my fears are trounced. Because I want Cassidy. I know that to my very soul.

Maybe what I want, I begin to realize, is Cassidy, but not his entire lifestyle.

Would it be possible, I wonder, for us to compromise? For us to blend our lifestyles to create a new life together? I don’t want Cassidy to give up sustainable living, but if we lived on the grid, we could have reliable electricity to power my laptop, a satellite dish, a hot water heater, and other modern amenities. We could still grow fresh vegetables in a garden of our own, but we could also jump in our car or truck and drive to town if we wanted something.

Would it be possible to still live a quiet life without being quite so isolated? Without being so hidden? Would it be possible to have a place where our privacy was at a premium, but not quite so far away from society?

Because that, I think to myself as I wash the vegetables I’ve harvested today, could be a plan for life. Such a plan makes me feel hopeful and determined, like if Cassidy would just agree to consider it, we could call our shot at happily ever after.

I look up as Cassidy opens the front door and walks into the kitchen, leaning against the wall to watch me.

“Those carrots are mighty pretty, Miz Cadogan,” he says.

I grin at him, feeling buoyant, wanting to share my thoughts with him and hoping he likes them as much as I do. “You think so, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, sauntering over to me.

Sexually, he is both instinctive and insatiable, and I’ve watched his confidence double every day. He knows how to make me come quick and hard with his fingers and mouth; he knows how to hold himself back while he’s deep inside me, forcing us both to wait for the intense pleasure of release. He’s good at sex—no, for someone who just had sex for the first time a week ago, he’s great at it—and I can’t get enough of him.

His flannel shirt is unbuttoned, showing his tan, washboard abs underneath, and my internal muscles clench. I want him. I always want him, and we are almost finished with our eighteen condoms. Yet another reason to be closer to town. Certainly he won’t argue with that one.

He comes up behind me while I dunk a carrot into the second bucket of water. I use the first to scrub the mud off. The second gets them clean. Set up at the small kitchen table, this system has the unfortunate side effect of getting the table and floor soaked, but it’s not a big deal. I’ll mop it up when I’m done, and we’ll have a delicious, fresh salad with dinner tonight.

I pick up another carrot and submerge it in the first bucket, which is brown and cloudy. When I take it out, it’s free of mud clumps, but still needs to be rinsed. I switch it to the other bucket, where Cassidy can see my hands in the light tan water, and I rub the carrot suggestively, feeling his eyes on me. He chuckles softly near my ear and reaches for my hips, pulling me back against him, and I can feel his erection bulging through the denim of his jeans. It’s straining against his zipper in a bid to get inside me, and that’s exactly where I want him to be.

“You’re giving me ideas, angel.”

“Is that right?” I ask him, grinning as I pluck another dirty carrot from the pile and rub my ass against his cock.

“Heck, yes.”

I want to talk to him about everything going on in my head, but first I want him to make love to me so we’re both relaxed and open. I’m wearing another one of the sundresses I found in the trunk, and my period should still be light enough not to matter.

I reach under the skirt for my underwear and bunch them up in the middle as I pull them down, stepping out of them and throwing them under the table. Then I lean forward and reach back again to flip my skirt up so that my ass is bared to him.

I hear him hiss through his teeth, and it’s one of those visceral, animalistic sounds that makes the moment even hotter. I hear the button of his jeans pop open, followed by the opening of his zipper. My eyes are closed, but I hear the crinkle of a condom packet being pulled from his back pocket and wait as he rolls it on. When his hands land on my hips, I flatten my forearms on the table, spilling more water from the buckets with my movement. Through the sundress, my breasts are instantly soaked, and Cassidy reaches forward, slipping his hands inside the fabric to cup them.

His rigid cock strains against the crack in my ass as he flicks my nipples with his fingers, tugging on them, squeezing them, rolling them, until they’re as hard as he is.

“Please, Cass,” I beg him, looking over my shoulder and spreading my legs a little wider.

I feel him probing for the right place, and then, without warning, he thrusts forward, burying himself the hilt with one smooth lunge.

I cry out, half in surprise and half in pleasure. I am so full of his thick, throbbing flesh, I can barely think of anything except what’s going on between us. My fingers grip the table, and I hold on as he withdraws, then pushes back inside. His hands are on my hips, holding me steady, and he pants in ragged puffs that I feel on the back of my neck. Again he leans away, again the slap of skin as he rams his cock inside me, making more water slosh onto the table, cold against my straining nipples.

One hand slides from my hip to my pussy, and two fingers find my clit. He massages the turgid bud, pumping into me again and again until my body tenses into one glorious, rigid knot, then explodes with pleasure. He thrusts once more, then stills, holding his breath until he growls my name, coming inside the condom, his hips slowing with his release.

The hand holding my hip slips around my waist, and he rests, lightly, on my back, supporting most of his weight on his feet. His voice is close to my ear when he says between pants, “Brynn. My . . . angel. My . . . greatest . . . treasure.”

He is still deeply imbedded inside me.

He lives in my heart, and I know—in the most profound reaches of my soul—that he always will.

My eyes fill with tears as I rest my cheek on the wet table, and I whisper, in total and complete surrender, “I love you, Cass. I want to stay together.”