The Brilliance Of The Stars
It was amazing how a couple weeks could change your mind about everything you thought you knew. Was it possible to love someone who you didn’t even truly know? Or could you love them better because you didn’t know them?
Jason didn’t know. He couldn’t answer that question, or any other question. He’d thought, before Amanda arrived, that he was starting to get his shit together. The woods provided a peaceful escape from his past. It was no longer peaceful, but he was no longer tortured. At least not physically. He just couldn’t define where they were going, he and Amanda.
She spent nights in her cabin. Despite the connection he felt, the rightness every time they were together, he couldn’t bring himself to the level of outright intimacy. What they were doing worked for them. For them both, for the time. That was all he knew and it was enough.
He paced the living room of his cabin restlessly. I want her here, damn it. Here. In my bed. He didn’t understand the cravings or his desires. It was like Amanda was a drug and the more he had her, the more he wanted.
He stared through the window at the twinkling light of her cabin. She must have lit a lamp. Maybe she was painting. She said she did that sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep.
Jason knew he should let her be, but he just couldn’t. Before he even really knew what was happening, his boots were scraping his way out the door, onto the porch and then he was half way across the yard and closing the distance to her cabin fast.
Because it was her cabin, he’d never gone there before. It seemed like an intrusion into Amanda’s world, like something that was far too intimate. It was irrational, but he’d always been almost afraid to cross that threshold.
Despite his earlier hesitancy, Jason found himself standing on the little porch of the small cabin, his hand raised. He rapped gently against the door, half hoping she wouldn’t hear him and he could retreat back to his own cabin.
This felt far too needy. To let her know just how potent his desire was for her. To share this part of himself with her and hope that she would in turn, open up herself to him. Not just their bodies. God, he could be free with his body. He could give and receive pleasure. It was his heart that he so carefully guarded.
“Jason.” Amanda pulled open the door and a beautiful smile illuminated her features. She’d changed. Earlier she’d worn a t-shirt and cut off jean shorts that looked like they came that way right from the store. Now she had on a black cotton maxi dress. It hugged her curves and showed off a hell of a lot of her gorgeous, neatly rounded breasts.
He nearly choked and carefully raised his eyes back to her face. “I- uh- thought I would come see if you wanted to go to the creek.”
“For a swim? It’s dark. It would be absolutely freezing without the sun.”
“Yah- no, not for a swim.” This is going to sound corny. It already sounds lame as hell. “The stars are quite incredible outside the city. The clearing above the creek- you can see them well without the trees overhead to get in the way.”
Amanda considered that for a second. “Oh. Sure! That sounds amazing. Come in for a second. I’ll grab a sweater so I don’t get eaten alive.”
So she was learning. Jason nearly smiled, but he held it back at the last second. “Sure.” He stepped into the cabin, across the invisible boundary that he’d been so irrationally worried about. Nothing happened. The world didn’t fall in on him. He didn’t even feel any different.
In fact, the cabin looked exactly the same. The only difference were the signs of life. Paints laid out, canvases set against the wall, an easel in the corner and a lamp burning on an end table beside the window.
“I can’t believe you paint when it’s this dark in here.”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind. I actually do most of it in the evening before it gets dark. If I paint right now it’s just laying down the initial outlines and colors and those can always be fixed if I make a mistake.
He walked slowly around the living room while Amanda disappeared into the small room off to the right. Her paintings were beautiful. Jason hadn’t seen them before. She hadn’t offered to show them to him and he hadn’t wanted to intrude on her privacy by asking. He’d wondered though, what her art would be like.
As his eyes caught on a painting she’d done, a smaller piece, probably sixteen by twenty, of his cabin in the woods, he knew she was good. Even in the dim light he could tell that the painting looked more like a photograph. The realistic details, the skill, it was all there.
He blinked. He wasn’t sure why but he hadn’t been expecting classic pieces. Abstract, modern stuff maybe.
“Okay, I’m ready.” Amanda emerged wearing a light gray sweater. He could already smell the bug spray.
“You’re supposed to bomb outside if you’re going to wear that.”
She hesitated for a second. “Oh. I suppose you’re right.” She flushed prettily and Jason swallowed hard.
He had to turn and beat a hasty retreat before he grabbed Amanda and threw her on the small, beat up couch or picked her up and carried her off to her bedroom.
She caught up with him outside. She didn’t ask him why he needed the escape. He saw, from the glint in her eyes, that she already knew. She slipped her hand through his and he led the way through the darkened woods.
He knew the path off by heart and he carefully guided Amanda down the silver moonlit dappled trail. He steadied her when he needed to, steered her away from raised tree roots and jutting stones.
Finally they came to the clearing. If it was a beautiful spot in the daytime, by night it was extraordinary. The moon’s silver glow played off the water’s inky black, pristine surface. The grass looked softer in the night, with the shadows playing over it.
He released Amanda’s hand and sat down on that lush bed of green. The night was still warm and there was almost no breeze. He lay back and sprawled out, staring overhead at the vast sea of twinkling stars shimmering in their blanket of purple blackness.
Amanda slowly sat then lay back, copying his motions. She too looked at the stars. He turned to watch her face as she stared at those twinkling beacons so very far away. Wonderment and rapture flickered over her features. She looked completely vulnerable in that moment, her guard down, his to protect and… love, if it was possible.
Jason shifted onto his side. He reached out and set his hand gently on her cheek. He caressed the angle of it, the tender, silky slope. Her eyes fluttered closed and a whispered breath escaped her parted lips. He leaned into her, his hand guiding her face to his.
His mouth slanted over hers, already hot and wanting and ragged with need. Her lips were the perfect fit and fullness. They moved, so alive under his. He nipped at her bottom lip, catching it gently between his teeth and her answering mewling whimper sent an erotic jolt right to his cock. It was already hard but the sounds Amanda made, her scent, the feel of her skin, god, just the sight of her, never failed to take him to new heights of primitive need.
Amanda ground against him, her hands sliding over his shirt, fumbling with buttons while his own hands roved over her dress. He cupped her breast through the thin cotton, found the nipple and squeezed gently before he lowered his head and took the hard bud into his mouth. He suckled her right through her clothing, his animal need taking over.
She whimpered again, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Her pelvis swiveled as her hips ground into him on raw instinct. He somehow managed to reach down and grab the hem of her dress, which had ridden up anyway. He pulled it up higher, shifting it around her waist. He was going to rake it up high, to touch and explore her like that, but the need to see her, to truly look at her outlined in the silvery glow of the moonlight, was so much greater.
“Stand up,” he commanded breathlessly. “Take your clothing off.”
Her eyes glistened, half hazy with passion, but there was a spark of amusement there too. “Only if you take yours off as well.”
“Of course. Nice as it would be, I’m not planning on just looking at you.”
Her face flushed pink with embarrassment and awareness. She stood slowly on the grassy bank and glanced towards the creek. Like some sensual goddess she shed her thin sweater. Jason watched, every single movement she made echoed in his aching groin. He’d never seen a woman so effortlessly sexy.
Amanda’s hands skimmed over her shoulders. She slowly slid down the straps of her dress and stood a little self-consciously, as it pooled at her waist. She recovered a second later, her shyness fleeing. Her hands, those glorious, shapely hands, slid the dress over her hips, taking her panties with it. She stepped from the pile of fabric at her ankles.
It wasn’t just the stars overhead that were awe inspiring. Amanda stood, like a vision, before him. Her eyes were wide with anticipation and the thrill of his enraptured gaze.
He wished he had the control to drag this out. To just stare up at her glorious curves. He wanted that moment to last for the rest of his life. To remember Amanda, always like this, the moonlight in her flaxen hair, spilling over her shoulders and over her breasts. The hard, little pink buds of her nipples, hardened with arousal, not chill. The round globes of her generous breasts, her narrow waist and flat stomach, the gentle curve of her hips and those long, shapely legs. God, she was so beautiful it actually hurt to breathe.
He stood slowly, hardly aware of what he was doing. Though his fingers felt wooden, Jason slowly worked at the buttons Amanda hadn’t already undone. He shed his shirt and her eyes widened as the moonlight licked over his bare chest. He liked the way she looked at him. With all the awe and desire in the world, but there was something else there besides purely physical need. She looked at him like she cherished him. Like no other man in the world existed.
His jeans went next. They ended up in a heap in the grass next to Amanda’s dress and sweater. They faced each other, the cadence of their breathing hard and rugged.
“Come here,” Jason demanded thickly.
Amanda obeyed. She closed the distance and stood before him, unafraid, every inch the sensual goddess she was born to be.
He nearly groaned as he reached out, wrapped his hand around her shoulder and pulled her into him. She melted against him. He bent his head and claimed her warm, exotic mouth in a hard kiss while his other hand came between them. She stole his breath as her tongue slipped into his mouth, finding his. Their teeth clashed once, with the force of their passion.
She moaned low in her throat and he captured the sound, tasted her pleasure as he slipped his finger through her already slick pussy. He caressed her eagerly, drowning in her wetness. Her hips swiveled against his hand, grinding into the pressure he created as he circled gently over her clit, her lips, her entrance.
“Do it,” she groaned, breaking the kiss.
Jason nearly died. Did she know how sexy she was, asking him for pleasure? Commanding him in her husky, erotic voice?
He circled her clit again, applying just the sweetest amount of pressure. Amanda whimpered and her eyes closed. Her lips parted in rapture. He skimmed back over to her entrance and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Her pelvis ground hard into his hand as he slipped his finger inside her tight, wet heat.
Her muscles clenched around him as he thrust gently. He reached up with his thumb and slowly caressed her clit at the same time and she gasped, her hips straining into his touch.
“Come for me Amanda,” Jason said huskily. She was already so close. He could feel her muscles tightening around him. He thrust again, a little harder, filling her up to his knuckle while he caressed the tight bud of her clit.
Her mouth parted. There were little white crescents on her bottom lip where her teeth had sunk in. She threw back her head and shattered around him. Her little cries of pleasure filled the night, echoed through the dark woods behind them and across the creek.
Jason watched it all. He felt it all. The tight spasms that gripped his finger as he moved inside of her, the waves of pleasure that washed over her face, the moans that were torn from her throat as she found ecstasy, while overhead, the stars watched.
He’d always been so afraid of this. Of intimacy. Of truly connecting with another person. Of sex being more than just a physical joining. In truth, he was still afraid. Deathly afraid of the feelings Amanda stirred inside of him, of having her and ever losing her, of there ever being a time when the perfection he felt in that moment no longer existed.