I looked at the tractor tire in front of me and could only laugh.

“You sure about this?” I said.

“Of course. Trust me,” he said with a cheeky grin and went over to give it a kick.

“So they just haul this thing up and down a few times? I’ll never understand men,” I said and returned his grin.

“Wanna see?”

I laughed.

“You’re going to lift this nasty dirty thing right now?”

“Well, not lift it exactly, more like turn it over till it’s on the other end of the gym.” His smile was so bright and easy I couldn’t help but smile along with him. Sometimes I swear Max was just a giant kid, getting up to mischief. He certainly liked a… shall I say physical challenge, that’s for sure.

I leant against the wall, put one heel up against it and crossed my arms.

“Oh yeah? Prove it,” I said. His face came alive.

“Done,” he said and knelt down to put his hands under it.

“Wait! Take your shirt off first.”

He raised his eyebrow at me, paused for a moment and then peeled off his shirt, all the while keeping eye contact.

“That’s better.”

He crouched down, gave a theatrical grunt and then straightened up, pulling the giant tire on its end. In a second he pushed it over again and it flopped down loudly on its other side. He continued like this, muscles popping and face growing red, till the tire was indeed all the way over at the other end of my brand spanking new gym. He flung it down, wiped the sweat from his brow and gave me a triumphant look.

“See?”

I tilted my head and looked at him, feigning boredom.

“Oh, I don’t know honey, I think it looked better over there,” I said and pointed to where it had just been, my other finger twirling around a lock of hair. He raced towards me and I squealed as he picked me up and spun me around.

“You’re pretty strong for a girl but I’m not afraid to wrestle you,” he said and plonked me down giggling on my feet.

I gave him a full, easy kiss and then smiled at him.

“Are we really doing this?” I said at last, then looked all around us.

“We? Baby this is all you. I’m just the muscles around here.”

I eyed him up and down.

“You certainly are. Now put your shirt on before the city council decides to fine me for keeping a wild animal on the premises.”

The new gym still needed a lot of work, but every day we left here it was in better shape than when we came in. We made a good team. We just …fit together. He walked off to fetch his shirt but I grabbed his arm and pulled him close to me.

“Well, there’s no rush,” I said.

I could read him like a book. I was beginning to recognize that look he gave me, that look that made everything else feel like it didn’t exist for a second. That look that still made my heart leap in my chest, because I knew exactly what it meant.

He took a few slow steps towards me, reached his hand for my waist and pressed me to him.

“You’re insatiable, aren’t you?” he said.

“Insatiable? I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about…” I cooed and trailed my hand down over the soft fuzz that led from his navel and down into his soft cotton track pants. I hooked my finger on the elastic there and pulled it back slightly before letting it snap back again.

“Oh, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen you on those mats from time to time, you have a lot of …stamina,” he said and dipped his head low to kiss me. I rose up to meet his kiss and it was soft and sweet and wavering.

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“Spying on you? When you’re teaching your self-defense class in your stretchy grey yoga pants and your pink shirt? Me? Never,” he said, and I giggled. “Anyway, you’re the one who’s the voyeur around here, remember?”

I giggled again. It was our longest running joke – that I was a closet peeping Tom and one day, when somebody asked us how we met, he was going to tell them it all started the day I decided to ogle him through his living room windows. I didn’t tell him that some days I still passed by those hedges, just on the off chance he was there again, mostly naked and with the curtains open a crack. It was mad of me, I know, but I had been toying with the idea of asking him to do something naughty like that with me again, once the craziness with the new gym died down a little. Maybe, I could be the one giving a show this time…

He leaned in for another kiss and I savored this one a little more.

“If you’re going to keep kissing me like that,” I moaned, feeling my body spark alive.

Soon he had me pinned against the wall, but gently, and I rose to my toes to meet his soft lips against mine, lacing my fingertips over the back of his broad neck. He pressed the length of his body full against mine, making sure I felt that thick bulge in his pants. I loved that devilish little smile on his face as he watched me enjoy it, and grind my hips back into his in eager response.

“Right here?” I whispered, and I felt an instant knot of juicy wet pleasure bloom between my legs. He pressed the hardening tip of his cock against me through his pants and smiled softly. “Yes, right …here,” he said and his hands held me snug round my waist with each slow thrust. I laughed.

“No, dummy, I mean here, in the gym.”

He swept away the hair from my collarbones and planted some growly kisses onto the skin there.

“Oh yes, baby, I’m going to give it to you right in your gym,” he said and I couldn’t help laughing.

I collapsed into a deep, warm caress and kissed him, but pulled back.

“Seriously though? Here? Are we allowed?”

He gave me an amused look.

“Well, you tell me. You’re the boss,” he said and dropped his head for more kisses.

I still couldn’t believe it. I owned a brand new gym in prime location in the city. I was set to launch in less than a week and it was going to be amazing. And best of all, I had the affection and support of a man so wonderful I had to pinch myself sometimes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. There was nothing that could make this moment any better. Well, except for one thing…

I trailed my hand up to the to of his head and gently pushed, bringing him to his knees. A big grin appeared on his handsome face and he kissed my belly and hipbones on his way down.

“Ah I see, yes ma’am, an undersea surveillance mission, my specialty,” he said, and he wasted no time in peeling open the front of my jeans and sliding them off my hips. I pressed my back into the wall, dropped my weight a little and spread my legs. There was something wildly thrilling about seeing a man who usually towered above me kneel in front of me, all six and a half foot of him. He smoothed his hands over my belly, the tops of my thighs and then slinked my panties down and bunched them with my jeans on the floor, leaving me perfectly exposed from the waist down.

Max had taught me so much. He had shown me what wonderful things were possible when people trusted one another. I could never have done something like this before, just standing here half naked without a care in the world, but with Max, I didn’t feel afraid of much anymore. He had shown me what it felt like to be in charge, to take action and to maintain dignity and composure. Max taught me the power of discipline and bravery… and pleasure. He taught me the one thing I hadn’t known how to do till then: receive. And now, I was here in all my glory, exposed and loving it, safe in his hands and feeling like the queen of the world, and all I could think about was how hot it would be to cum right in his mouth.

“I love you,” he whispered to my clit, which was a funny little thing he always did right before he pressed his tongue against me and slid a long, gentle lick right through the most tender parts of me. He parted me gently with his thumbs, lovingly squeezed my thighs and sunk his tongue into those warm pleats, flickering wet and playful over those places he had learnt thrilled me the most. You’d never say he was a man who spent essentially years and years of his life celibate. He took the task of eating me out as seriously as any soldier’s duty, and with as much focus and attention to detail.

I groaned and let my head fall back, knowing he’d take care of every little flutter and ripple down below. I anchored my hands on his shoulders and closed my eyes to better savor the delicious pulses of pleasure that were growing, radiating from deep inside and fluttering outwards. I loved fucking Max, don’t get me wrong. I loved how wild and enthusiastic he’d get, and how no feat of athleticism was beyond him when pounding me to the brink of pleasure was his goal. I loved how even now, it still took me a few breaths and a moment to adjust to the size of him and take him all in, every inch, so that sometimes I felt like just holding him inside me was enough to make me cum. I loved all of that, no doubt, but dammit there was something to be said about his otherworldly tongue, too.

He had a way of chasing each little squirm of bliss, hunting it down and swirling his tongue sweetly right where I needed it, till I couldn’t help but shake, the reverberations of each wave of pleasure bolting through me like his tongue was an electricity source I was plugged into. I was wet. More than wet. Max taught me something else: that I wasn’t, as I used to believe, a difficult, unresponsive woman, but in fact a gushing fountain waiting to happen, ready to soak him and everything else in a two-mile radius at the peak of pleasure. I learnt that my body was juicier than I ever thought possible, and even now the moisture streamed freely down my inner thighs and past my knees. Knowing that he dutifully lapped it all up without a second thought made me warm inside.

“Are you going to come for me, baby?” he whispered, peering up at me with a look even the devil would be embarrassed to have on his face. I could only whimper and nod, so focused was I on chasing that fleeting little path of pleasure he was tracing out with tongue. He stroked his thumbs teasingly around my pussy, admiring me and planting distracted kisses on the top of my thighs, and beneath my belly-button.

“Oh god, Max, please don’t stop,” I cried. He smiled and obediently returned his warm lips to my body, sealing a kiss round my clit again and sucking so gently and sweetly I nearly saw stars behind my closed eyes. This is where Max’s lessons all happened, right here, in this moment. Words meant nothing, but with Max, I felt. I felt what trust really meant: surrender. To let go and give yourself freely to another is the first and only step to bliss, the doorway into a whole universe of wonderful things that I had been too scared to open to before him. My fear and doubt had been cords tying me closed, and with each kiss, with each stroke and caress and glorious fuck, Max was breaking those cords, one by one, till I felt so free I wanted to soar.

“There we go… look how fucking close you are,” he said and slowed his tongue to the tiniest, most heavenly little circles on the tightest spot on my clit, inching me closer to the shuddering apex of an orgasm I knew was going to be big. Max never made me feel weird about squirting – in fact, he adored it, and took pride in getting me so turned on that I couldn’t help but gush everywhere. How could I have even known that this was something my body could do, when I was with Derek? No, there were new doors that only Max could open, new, sexy superpowers that only he knew the way to coax out of me.

My toes clawed at the floor. My breathing shallowed out and I felt myself getting hot and the world disappeared except for a narrowing tunnel of pleasure that I seemed to be accelerating down into. His kind of orgasm started deep inside me and took its time bursting free.

“I’m going to—”

“I know,” he said and in an instant he had hoisted both his hands under my ass to better angle me to his mouth, which he now had pressed fully against my pussy, so that the moment I couldn’t hold on any longer I came directly against his tongue, one deep throb after another.

I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out. Instead, the widening circle of heat spreading out from deep inside spread right over me and engulfed me. I knew he had saved the best for last, and as my body bucked and shuddered through an orgasm, he thrust his tongue deep into me and tasted each and every spasm. I couldn’t help but grind against his face, and he obliged, pulling me hard down onto his greedy lips to devour me, his tongue working quickly even as I came.

“Max,” I growled.

“Fuck yes… I love it when you come,” he said and begin laying long licks over the length of my cunt, from the bottom all the way to the top and down again, almost apologizing for the rollercoaster of sensations he had put me through. I shuddered so deeply and with such gratitude, I couldn’t help but laugh and collapse a little against the wall.

“How do you even do that?” I moaned and tried to catch my breath, still pawing at his strong shoulders to ride out the last little shudders of my orgasm.

“That was amazing.”

“You’re amazing.”

I closed my arms around him and sighed.

“When you do that to me, I swear I’m like putty afterwards,” I said and returned to kissing his neck again, loving that gorgeous warm musk that belonged to him alone.

“Yes, that’s the idea,” he said and then he lowered his hands, grasped my hips and quickly spun me around till I was facing the wall again. Max’s favorite position. Ah, now I understood. Max was a strong man with strong appetites, but he knew I was happy to go along with almost anything if he’d warmed me up with an orgasm that good to start.

“My turn,” he said and I heard the heavy fabric of his trousers slip to the floor. It’s crazy, but I was instantly turned on again, ready for more even though I was sure a second ago I had come so hard I nearly passed out.

I obediently tilted my hips and offered him up my ass, wanting nothing more than to do whatever it took to make him feel as good as he had just made me feel. I felt the thick rod of his cock bounce against the skin of my thighs and braced myself. He wasted no time popping the head into my already soaked hole and then, positioned just so, he drove his hips up viciously, sending the entire length of his cock straight to the deepest part of my body. His legs hugged mine, his belly pressed firm against my spine and his arms shadowed mine, so that every part of him surrounded every part of me, and together we were linked in the most delicious place of all, where he began to stroke long, gooey thrusts, the friction between our bodies so fucking good it gave me goosebumps…