[ October 2001 ]

ANN

When I concentrate, it's on his hands.

I can see the moment as if it's in quarter time. My fingertips glide across his palms and then my fingers weave into his ... and my hand gets lost somewhere in the vastness of his grip. When his hand curls around mine, my own hand seems to disappear.

This fascinates me.

I watch for evidence of my hand. I can see bits of my fingers poking between his. I watch as his hand flexes around mine. Is he dreaming of me? Is this why his hand grips mine even as he sleeps?

I can't see his face because he lies behind me, his body curled into mine, his lips on the nape of my neck. All I can really take in is his hand. Holding mine. Refusing to let go.

Then, I look down at his other hand. It rests between my legs. It cups my sex even as it keeps me in place there, with one leg pulled back over his thigh, with his knee protruding between my thighs.

This thrill races through me at the thought of this.

He's here with me again.

I cannot believe it. It takes my breath away. I don't want to read too much into this. So I don't. But this is his fourth trip to see me in only two months and this time he wants to stay for longer than a few days. He wants to be here for however long he can spare, he told me when I picked him up at the airport.

He whispered that to me at my car. He put his lips to my temple and just hugged me into him. It took him so long to say it. He had put his bags in the back of my car and then he turned to me and grabbed hold and it was like he just didn't know what else to do.

"You can stay as long as you like," I had whispered to him as I held onto him.

"You'll get sick of me," he'd said with this half-chuckle and I knew he just wanted to know he was wanted.

"Only if you keep hogging the blankets," I'd said. "And I get the front page first in the morning."

It was the mood of this visit. Trying to keep it light on the surface while scrambling beneath the surface to figure out how deep we were sinking.

And all the while, I kept watch over him. There was something different with him, some undefined worry. Something in his mood that made me want to protect him and I didn't know what I was guarding him from. But from the instant I'd seen him walk through the security gate, I'd felt ... something. Actually, I'd felt his presence before I saw him. Somehow, I just felt him approaching and then my eyes found his body. And the closer he'd gotten to me, the more I'd seen something in his carriage that told me something unpleasant might have happened to him.

It had to have been whatever case he'd just been working. He'd called me from some bar in Oaxaca, Mexico. He'd been down there helping Dino on a mission and the only thing he said to me when I answered the phone was that he needed to see me. I'd said, come here to me then.

I hadn't seen him in almost three weeks. He'd stopped over for one night and part of another day on his way to Mexico. But he'd kept in contact. Phone calls, emails, even an odd IM session. For a fling, this was turning into something else between us.

He'd been with me three days this time. It seemed like five minutes. It seemed like we had known each other in another life. We were strangers who somehow knew each other on instinct.

He was unlike any man I'd ever known. By turns, he was sex defined then charming and witty then sophisticated and virile then rugged and uncompromising then cantankerous and chauvinistic. Every time I'd get irritated with his need to exert his masculine pride or his tough will on me, he'd tell me to get used to it ... and he'd say I just had to learn to deal with a real Aussie. But then he'd do something to make me see his vulnerability and there were too many sides to him to explain it away as easily as I might have done another man.

I didn't have a clue.

Men, in my experience, could take a hint. Yeah, they could be dumb clods about some things, but when a woman like me set limits, they recognized them. Not Terry.

It just seemed to make him push. And I let him. I enjoyed him pushing. For the first time in my life, I found myself feeling firmer in my own femininity that I was allowing some relentlessly strong man to exert his will on me and force me to fight back just to keep from being a total push-over bimbo. I don't know why this was. But it was.

But the thing was ... I did like it. It actually excited me sexually. I liked the fact that he seemed unable to control this want of me and this need to just be a man with me. Not that it didn't also alternately bug the shit out of me and leave me reeling with its impact.

But then that's just me.

It was like that first evening he was with me on this trip and he turned from seeming fragile at the airport into seeming to relish his physical superiority when we got to my building. I had barely turned off the engine of my car when he was moving a hand between my knees. I laughed, nerves to the fore, and tried to pry his hand off my thigh as he moved it up.

"Hold on now, fella. My loft's only an elevator ride away," I said to him.

He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He kept his hand between my thighs while his other hand undid my seat belt, removed my hands that were trying to remove the hand he had creeping inexorably up toward my groin, placing each of my hands ... one by one ... onto the steering wheel, attacking my neck with his mouth ...

I was caught by lust.

It was his voice. "I won't make it that far," he finally murmured into my skin.

"Someone will see," I replied but the fear inside my voice seemed to excite him.

"Not if you're on your knees," he said just as his fingers shoved under the crotch of my soaked panties and he was rubbing, going inside, forcing my body to obey him.

And then his mouth was at my ear and he was talking and stroking me into coming. I'd never had anyone but him find this part of me that enjoyed hearing obscenities like he did. It wasn't like he cursed into me, it was just that he'd tell me what he was going to do and he was graphic and profane ... and I just felt so powerful that it was me who made his mind think this way.

Oh. God. The way he talked to me.

My body was gripped inside a coming even as his voice was ordering me to do it silently. Telling me that one of my neighbors had just come into the garage from the elevator. I couldn't even open my eyes. I was too far inside the coming ... too engrossed in what his hand was doing and what his force of personality was controlling. Tears were drip drip drip from one eye and then he was whispering to me, kissing along my jaw, telling me what a good little girl I was being for him.

And making me come again as he whispered to me of what he wanted me to do next. Want you on your knees, he whispered hoarsely. My cock in your hot mouth. Your talented little tongue. Suck me. Drink down my cum. Let me see how you look. Feel your neck while my cock's inside your throat and you're sucking me in.

"That's what I want. Now. Do it for me, Annie."

God.

I opened my eyes, gasping for breath. Looking around me, seeing my neighbor getting in his car. His eyes darting over to my car. What could he see? Me behind the wheel. A man kissing my neck. My hands on the steering wheel. In the dankness, I was sure he couldn't see the way my skin was flushed. How I was panting. Could he see my lips moving as I told Terry to wait ... please wait ... just don't make me disappear from sight while my neighbor was looking right at me because then he'd know ... he'd know we were having sex in here.

And the instant my neighbor slid into his car, even before he backed out, even knowing that on his way out, he'd surely look over at my car ... I was still already letting Terry drag me over to his body and ...

Straddling his lap and kissing him so hard ... his hands sliding up over my breasts and to my shoulders ... pushing me down ... panting at me as I obeyed and sunk down to the floor of the car before him.

Shuddering as he eased the seat back as far as it would go and fascinated by what I was feeling as I watched his big hands slide his slacks down ... raising his hips to do it. His hands ... one grabbed around his thick shaft and began lazily stroking while the other weaved into my hair and nudged me forward.

I was enthralled in the silence between us. As if both of us were absolutely sure this wasn't happening.

His cock. Oh. Weeping. Feeling the skin, so soft. As always, in adoration of the way his shaft was thick and hard and thickly veined and dark and ... God. I sighed as I bent in, absorbing his scent, tasting the pre-cum droplets and wanting nothing more than to feel the way he'd fight the urge to fuck my throat hard when I was sucking him.

Moved from my reverie as I took in the tip and swirled my tongue around just to reacquaint myself with it ... and then my eyes darted up to his as his big hands swept my hair up off my face ... I loved that he always wanted to watch.

This time was amazing. He normally talked to me or at least murmured or moaned ... something. This time? God. He just watched. His expression was just pure need. Pure demand.

I came when he did. I swear that I did. There was something about how at the end, I watched as he lost some of that control. I knew he was about to come and I was trying so hard to get him there even as his hands were trying unconvincingly to ease me off ... and then his head snapped back into the seat and we lost eye contact. I sucked harder and hummed around his shaft. All I heard from him was this pure masculine grunt of pleasure and then he was shoving himself into me even as his hands on my head held me in place ... and just when I thought I might choke to death, I felt him shooting down my throat and I was coming right along with him. Both of us shuddering by the end. Me whimpering at how it had felt. Him not making a noise I could hear above my own.

I licked him up and didn't care that some man I'd once tried to do that for had told me he couldn't ever look at me the same way that I would want to do that. I knew by then that Terry liked this.

And then he reached down under my arms and lifted me up into his lap. He cuddled me into him and whispered into my hair. "I've missed you, Annie."

Said with so much heart and I knew it was the truth. I hugged in around his neck and tried not to cry that this strong man seemed so weak at this moment.

It just seemed to me that this was indicative of how I was with him. I didn't think this was anything with staying power -- he didn't have room for me in his life except as someone he'd stop in to see while flying between his base in Washington D.C. and some mission or case he had to go deal with. I had him pegged as the good time lover, the one who got the cream of the crop of my time and energy because he was just that good and deserving. But never the one who'd stick around and try to have a normal give and take relationship.

So, why not enjoy the way he was? Why be bothered by the way he seemed to like it when I had to visibly clamp my mouth shut to keep from telling him off when he'd make some unilateral decision for me or when he'd brutishly deal with any man who came near me when we were out together? Christ, you don't think that wasn't actually pretty sexy? That a man like him would feel territorial? And show it?

But then today ... today was different, wasn't it?

That really had pissed me off. Pissed me off to the point where I fucking walked away from him. And then he'd come after me and he hadn't been at all prepared for me to lay into him with a temper he'd not really ever seen before.

My eyes look at his hand. The one that encases mine. I lean over and kiss at it. I feel him shift behind me and his hand over my sex pulls me in tight to his big body behind me. His mouth is nuzzling below my ear and I tense.

Sleep-hushed voice from him. "We okay, Annie?"

"I don't know." My voice is husky.

"You gonna make me leave?" he asks, so soft and I think that shakes me more than anything.

"No." Replying in a hushed voice. "I don't know what to do with you."

"You could love me," he says.

I turn in his arms and feel his hands leave their hold on my body so that I can face him. "If I didn't, you'd be gone already."

He licks his lips slowly and I can see him thinking this over. In his eyes, there is something new for me. Some part of him he's never let me see before.

This is how I tell him. After what has happened, doesn't that seem so very odd that this ends with me telling him that I am in love with him?

It had begun as such a simple day. I had to leave him to go to work. He had wanted to tag along and I'd made a face at him as I told him to not be ridiculous. And two hours later, I didn't notice his rental car behind me as I drove over to City Hall from the paper and made my rounds. Strangest thing was that I kept feeling ... I don't know what it was, just this odd sensation that he was nearby. But I never could see him.

Not until I was standing outside the finance department chief's office and wrangling in an argument with her comptroller, demanding some documents we'd put in a request for the day before and this bozo of a CPA lecturing me about what a bitch I was.

The CPA guy, he made the mistake of poking me really hard in the chest to make a particularly vicious point about my need to discredit his boss. Before I could even react, this blur of a body came from somewhere behind me, grabbed the guy by his throat and shoved him with a thud against the creamy marble wall of the dimly lit hallway.

Right there in fucking City Hall!

I swear to God my first thought was that right before my eyes in City Hall I was witnessing a mugging on a city official!

And then I heard it ... this deadly lethal Australian voice telling the CPA guy he'd just made a mistake. That the next time he thought about touching me, he'd better decide if he wanted to keep his balls or not.

"Terry!" I hissed it in shock even as I was trying to drag him off the CPA guy and I was looking around in a panic lest some NOPD officer witnessed this assault and decided to haul Terry's ass in to jail. I could just see the headlines the next day.

"Let him go. Now! Jesus. Terry, please. Don't hurt him. For God's sake. Stop it!"

But he shoved me off him with this flick of his shoulders. His face right in the CPA guy's face. A look there that frightened the CPA guy. "Apologize to her. Now."

This trembling apology came fluttering out of the guy's shocked lips. And then Terry let him go and the guy looked like he was about to faint.

"What have you done?" I whispered.

Terry looked at me then back at the guy. This growl of a voice saying, "Where are the documents she wants?"

The guy was pulling them out of his attaché and handing them over to me without another word. He stumbled away from us as I tried to apologize.

And then it was just the two of us in that hallway. I stood there, stunned. Terry looked at me, taking in my open mouth, my flushed cheeks, my inability to even react. Then he put his hand on my elbow and tried to lead me away. I pulled back from him and then let loose.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I almost shouted at him. Three people way down the hall turned to stare. "What the fuck do you think you were doing? Trying to get me in trouble? What? How dare you!"

I saw him wince and then his face set in this blank hardness that I recognized from the first time I'd met him. "I wasn't about to let him ..."

Cut him off without even a pause. "You? You weren't about to let him what? Damn it, Terry. This was nothing to do with you. I was working. You had no right to interfere. What the hell are you doing here anyway? I'm working."

His mouth opened and I saw the look of pure shock turning into frustration on his face at my reaction. All I felt was fury and embarrassment. No, that's not right. I felt something else but I didn't place it at the time. It was only later that I realized what it was ... I felt the fact that he'd have no reason not to believe I wouldn't have accepted this from him. What had I done in the time since we'd been intimate to ever give him reason to believe that I wouldn't have thought it was fine for him to have stepped in to protect me when he thought I was being threatened? Why would he have ever presumed that I wouldn't enjoy having him watch out for me?

I rushed out of the building because I didn't know how to deal with him when he'd made me so angry and so confused. But he'd caught up with me and his arm around my waist was dragging me along the street until we reached his rental and he tossed me inside even as I was bitching at him.

He barely grunted to me to tell me to shut up until we got back to my loft. I couldn't believe it ... that he would say that to me and that he would scare me when he did. But he did. And when he yanked the car into the parking space in my building's garage, I just sat frozen in the seat, just like I had for the entire five-minute drive there. He opened the car door and I couldn't move until his hand touched my cheek.

"Get the fuck away from me," I hissed out to him.

But he took my hand and my little Popsicle of a body just followed his into the elevator. Inside my loft, I moved maybe two inches from door after we were inside. I just stood there, staring at the floor.

I just didn't know what to say or do. Was I overreacting? I wanted him to leave and never again darken my door. I wanted him to change back into the man who'd made love to me that morning. I wanted to understand why I felt like I'd just crashed back down to earth after three days of heaven in his arms.

But then he made the mistake of coming near enough to me to lean around my body and slam the door shut. It snapped me to awareness and I reached out and slapped him hard.

Next thing I knew, I was attacking him. Dragging off his clothes while I cursed at him. Shoving him down the wall until we were both rolling on the floor and devouring each other. Then I had his cock in my mouth and his mouth was on my sex ... and we were both coming ... that was how it seemed to me. A fine madness.

But there was more that happened. It's just that I didn't want to think that I could feel that kind of deep passion lust over a man who'd just endangered my career while he was making me realize that I hadn't been this alive in years.

That was the thing, wasn't it?

He made me come alive again.

Everyone around me had noticed the difference. The way I just was more involved in life lately.

It scared me that I could react this way with him -- that I'd done that with him. That we'd both lost our minds at the same time we lost our reserve.

Truly. It's why I cleaned myself up, dressed and walked out while he was in the bathroom. I got the maintenance guy to give me a lift to the corner near City Hall, got my car, returned to the newspaper and filed my story. Before I left, I told my editor that I wasn't sure what to do about the CPA guy but figured someone from management might need to make a formal apology and suspend me for a few days to make it right.

There were few words between Terry and me that evening. We hadn't made love that night. In bed, I'd stayed on one side and he'd stayed on the other. I actually think we were both too shocked by what had happened to know what to do. But sometime in the night, I awoke to find our bodies had sought the other out in our fitful sleep.

And when I realized my hand was reaching for his and that he was instinctively taking it within his hold ... something inside me shifted and I just was overwhelmed by how deeply I felt for him. It shocked me, it awed me. I read into the way his body held mine that he was the first man in far too long who cared about me, who cared about what happened to me. I don't know if it was the hand that held mine or the hand that was possessively claiming the right to my sex ... one of them was the instrument that moved me to wonder.

And I also knew this ... he was the first man in maybe my entire life that I cared enough about to worry about letting him so close that I might break his heart if he saw too much in me. He was also the one man I knew I'd always wish I could keep safe from all harm.

Inside my mind, this flash of memories ran. His first visit ... the way life had moved into my loft with him. The rawness of making love with him those first few times. His next visit ... the way it took us nothing to get reacquainted. He left and the next morning, I discovered that he'd left his toothbrush boldly and presumptuously sitting next to mine in the holder on my sink console. I'd stared at it every day until his third visit. When he left that time, I found he'd left behind three t-shirts and a pair of jeans in a drawer from which he'd pulled my clothing to make room for his. And inside my bathroom, there was now evidence that a man had invaded my space -- shaving lotion, aftershave, a hairbrush, things like that. The next morning, I'd been sitting on my couch scanning the front of each section of the paper when my eye caught something that was out of place on the shelving unit before me.

It was this little box. Deep midnight blue. Plush and velvet. Round. A strange pattern of a moon inlaid on the top. This box ... so out of place where it perched right there on the corner of the shelf. Deliberately out of place among the books that took up the remainder of the shelf.

Inside, a pair of round pearl earrings. Simple. Classic. Beautiful lustrous cream. 

I had sat and stared at this box in my hands for a long time before I put the earrings on. Then I called his cell and we talked for almost an hour before I told him why I'd called him. When I thanked him, he'd given me this little chuckle. Was that the first thing I'd found, he asked me.

So while he hung on the phone, I roamed my apartment and discovered that in each visit, he'd left behind some little something on my shelves. From his first visit, he'd left me this coin from Panama. I found it nestled up along a clear jar that held seashells I'd collected in my travels. On his second visit, he'd left me a blank journal that I had never noticed as it laid neatly before my research books on the art of writing.

The journal. It is filled with my remembrances of him. It is how I've remembered enough of this time to write in this electronic journal. It is one of my dearest possessions. I carry it with me everywhere.

Finding it that morning made me reveal something to him that I worried would scare him. But it didn't. This was how I began to realize that I could tell Terry things I would never have dreamed that I could ever share with a man whom I wanted to like and admire me.

This memory of the journal and how it began my ability to reveal myself was tracing in my brain that night as I thought about how this was his fourth visit in two months. But when I turned in his arms and somehow found myself voicing the fact that I was falling in love with him ... how was it possible? Then again ... how was it ever possible not to love him?

When I said it, when I said I would have made him leave that day if not for the fact that I was already loving him ... God. The look on his face.

There was this instant flush of emotion that bloomed in his eyes. He swallowed hard and then there was just this pure man before me.

His hand swept up my body, pausing to caress and heft my breast and then gliding down over my hips until it dragged my knee over his thigh. Leaning in over me and kissing me soft. Then deepening it when he felt me kissing back.

Murmuring to me. Hushed words that were more pure emotion than real sentences. Soothing tone. Acting like I'd just given him something precious.

He made love to me. Not with me, so much as to me. In that sense that he simply was in control and giving to me everything he couldn't say. So gentle. So sweet. So deeply passionate. Crying when he came and holding me like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go.

I came and came and came. Like I'd never stop. I didn't want to. I only wanted what I had then.

And the rest of his visit, we were together almost constantly as I served out my suspension from work. We found the way to talk about what had happened and I found the way to stop being such a pushover with him. I laid down ground rules if he was truly going to be a part of my life.

Not that he actually agreed to them. Heh. Not Terry. That would have been much, much too easy.

[ NOVEMBER 2001 ]

ANN

He must have had some intuitive knowledge of me right from the beginning that it would be the little things that would grab me. Not that he didn't do some pretty masterful big things, but it was always the little gestures that he did that kept drawing me further and further into him.

Through it all, I honestly think he was almost calculating the affect of each big move he made. But it was the little things he did, the things that he just did because it was in him to do them, that got deep down inside me.

He could take my breath away with a phone call. Just hearing that pulse of life in my ear, his soft rough purr coming across the miles to make me miss having him right there with me.

I told him once, late at night, huddled in my bed, the phone in the crook of my neck and my eyes looking inward at what images he planted in my brain. "I can't breathe," I heard myself whisper to him. It was maybe two weeks since he'd been there and since I'd told him I was falling in love with him. I was beginning to live for his phone calls and I wondered what I'd ever done without them.

"Breathe with me," he commanded, all whisky, sex and smoke.

In the dark. Just listening to him. Breathing. That's all he did. Breathe. And he robbed me of my sanity. I heard him and I knew he was stroking himself, pumping, jerking ... I knew it. I think he heard me ... breathing back to him while my fingers were inside me ... and it ramped it up for him. I tried to beg for mercy but the words wouldn't come because I couldn't breathe except to breathe with him. And then I heard him come and ...

"God. What are you doing to me?" I whispered. "I've never had a man who makes me want the way you do."

He didn't say anything for so long. Just breathing into the phone as he came down from that high. "How would you like to be here with me Thursday night? I'll show you what you missed tonight," he suddenly asked me. "Need to touch you, love."

He was serious. So serious. "I need to touch you, too. But I don't know if I can get off work, Terry."

"Do it. Annie, please. I'm emailing you the ticket information. First class to DC. You'll get in midday."

"You're in DC?" I took a deep breath and felt the first flutter of letting myself hope that I'd be with him soon. "I thought you were in London."

"Just got back here. There's a function Thursday night. It's a pretty important appearance. Contacts we need to make and impress. Dino wants me there with him. You'd get to meet Heather."

I sat up. Something in the tone of his voice. I knew this was important to him for more than just the schmooze factor; this was the first of his close friends he had ever tried to arrange for me to meet. I'd only ever met Dino because I'd been on the job. Now he wanted me to come to where he lived and to meet his best friend's wife, a woman I knew Terry adored. "I would like that. I truly would."

"Bring a formal. It's a pretty swank deal."

"I'll find a way. I promise. Even if I have to call in sick." Then not quite knowing what all this entailed and suddenly shy about just asking. "I mean, what's the big deal, right? I've got enough vacation time built up that they can give me two lousy days."

"Take longer. Come stay with me a while."

"Really?" Not able to hide the instant pleasure that gave me and that seemed to please him if his amused chuckle in response was any measure. "I'll see what I can swing."

And all the begging and pleading at work the next morning seemed like small change to have paid that afternoon when I walked off the plane and he was standing there at the gate to greet me. I hadn't expected to see him there because of all the new security restrictions but I still had no concept of just how many strings someone like Terry could pull to do something he wanted.

He stood there watching me as I walked up to him. I had dressed just as he'd asked and I knew he was observing how aware of my body that it made me.

It was the moment I realized that he was the match that had lit the tender of my sexuality. Just seeing him made me wet. He had me tapping into parts of my desire that I hadn't even really known had existed before him. It was like he had opened a door and I walked through to be introduced to my own sexuality.

Standing there. Just waiting on me. Staring into me. Trying to make me crumble beneath the onslaught of his virility. But clutching flowers in one of his big hands, his fist fidgeting around their stems and for the first time since I'd known him, I realized he was nervous.

For a moment, we just faced each other. Looking. Like we needed to be sure it was real. My fingers reached out and touched his face ... and then he was putting his arms around me, slowly, purposefully, just hugging me into him while his mouth next to my ear told me he was so glad to see me. I felt the petals of the roses glancing, bouncing along the back of my legs below the short skirt I'd worn.

I chattered to him on the drive in. He was largely silent. It made me more nervous until I realized that just as my loose tongue was a sign of my nerves, his still tongue was a sign of his own nerves. I turned to the window and looked out at Washington passing me by as we delved deep into the Georgetown area ... and I grinned as I felt better at knowing this meant something to him.

He lived in this apartment building in West End, near Embassy Row, that was stylishly tucked amidst an area of red and peach colored brick townhouses. It was an older building that had been retrofitted with all the latest amenities and technological necessities that someone like Terry could never have existed without.

Inside the elevator, he held my hand and watched the numbers until the doors slid open on the third floor. I kept noting these little things he did ... rubbing his chin, pulling his hair, licking his lips ... but it took seeing the expectant light in his eyes when he opened the door to his place before I realized that what he was most nervous about was what this signaled that he was letting me inside his space. I paused on the way in and felt the weight of that even as his hand at the small of my back gentled me inside.

He took my coat and my bags to deposit them in the bedroom. I wandered around inside the living room. Leather couch, twin armchairs in rich masculine fabric ... charcoal tables that complimented the brushed steel of the appliances in the kitchen I could glimpse through a doorway ... art on the wall ... an air of understated sophistication that seemed almost cold but not quite ... more like impersonal and waiting. The only real personality seemed to be his choice of displaying his reading material. I was standing in front of a floor to ceiling bookcase and just absorbing titles of books and subject matter ... military history, classics, geopolitical analysis ... and I pulled out the one incongruity that snagged my eye. It was an Agatha Christie book ... featuring Hercule Poirot.

"You told me once that your love of reading started the summer you devoured every one of her books you could find at the library," he whispered against my neck. I felt his warm, welcome hands on the slope of my thigh, just below the hem of my skirt ... and even as I tried to formulate some response to finding out he'd gone out and read this book just to see if he could know me better ... his hands were inching my hem up.

"Don't tell me you read this just because of me?" I breathed out even as I leaned back into his body and tamped down the nerves he unleashed inside me.

"Sure," he said, now pressing a kiss in along my neck as I arched sideways to look in his face and see if he was lying ... knowing he wasn't ... knowing that I really just wanted to look at his face. "I even read that Interview With A Vampire novel because you said it evoked a great sense of New Orleans."

His hands reached the top of my hose ... found skin there ... crept over to find that I'd done as he asked ... no panties ... he knew I had done it just for him ... he gave me this soft growl that was pure predatory and I felt myself dripping for him.

"What about Confederacy Of The Dunces?" I asked him, trying hard to keep up with his mind even though my body only wanted to match steps with his body's pulse.

"Never try to get me to eat a Lucky Dog."

"Never. I promise." Swallowing at what his fingers were doing to me. "Damn. You're good."

"So I've been told." 

Not able to stifle a giggle at his cockiness. "You're too much."

"I've heard that before ... but it's usually a compliment, not a complaint."

"No complaints from me."

"Good job. Hate to turn you over my knee when you've just arrived."

He turned me around and I dropped the book as I reached for him. Long kiss. One I'd been needing to get over the nerves. The way he loved me ... with such passion and yet such depth of feeling. Like the connection between us hinged on every nuance of his every move. His need to take me didn't let him take the time to drag me to the bedroom; he simply pushed me up against the nearest wall. Yet his need to show me this meant something to him made him proceed with deliberate care.

So often when Terry made love with me, I felt the force of his drive as something I had to contend with and struggle against to keep from being swallowed up. I liked that. But I also liked it when, like that night, it just felt like he might get lost inside exploring me and he'd almost forget that he should want to come as much as I wanted to. That's not such a good description, but it's the best I can do.

We showered together after and played like kids in the water. Gleaming clean, we adorned our bodies with our nice clothes for the evening's social occasion. I look back on this and wonder why I wasn't more nervous about meeting Heather? I knew he wanted her to like me ... but I think the truth is that I figured no one married to Dino and friends with Terry would ever be a woman I wouldn't like and respect. Right?

How nice to know I was right.

I met her at the table. The first thing that struck me was how she and Dino were looking at each other. Like nothing else in the world even existed in that one moment. I hung back, not wanting to interrupt what seemed to be a sweet privacy, but Terry's sure hand on my waist guided me forward as his mouth at my ear chose just that moment to ask me if he'd remembered to tell me I looked beautiful.

You know how sometimes you meet someone and right from the first handshake and smile, you just know you're liking the person? That's how it was with Heather. She was taller than me, slender, dark, gentle and warm. The secret to Dino's smile, I thought.

Just as when he let me into his apartment, I suddenly realized Terry was nervous in this time of seeing to it that I passed Heather's inspection. He kept saying things about me to Heather ... these little things ... like it was just so important that she like me that he wanted to jump start her knowing me. He'd say something like, 'Ann's a journalist,' and she'd grin softly at him and say, 'Yes, I remember you saying that.' My resume for this interview with Heather appeared to be my job, my city, my sense of humor, my green eyes, my Cajun blood, my spirit, my sass and my love of fishing. It left me wondering just how much he'd told her ... and why he'd thought it was that necessary to prepare her for me.

I asked her that later that evening when we took a break from the schmoozing duties and sat in the parlor area of the ladies' restroom pretending to fix our makeup. I said something like, did he remember to mention that I'm housebroken, too? And she giggled with me over it all. But later, in this pause in our conversation, I asked her, does he prepare you to meet all his girlfriends like that? And she said, you're the first one. Just as I was about to ask for clarification ... am I the first girlfriend he's brought around you or the first one he's felt he needed to prepare you to meet ... my cell rang.

The desk. Calling to discuss a disputed quote and I told Heather I'd meet her back at the table. Twenty minutes and one frustrating bitch fest later, I wandered back into the swank ballroom where the fundraiser we were attending was being held.

It was such a lovely venue. Refined, classy, just a bit over the top. Tuxes and gowns. Champagne and candles and flowers and glittery balloons. Big band tunes and dancing. Up until this point, we'd none of us had much in the way of dancing. Terry and Dino had been working the room, schmoozing with some clients and potential clients of importance to their firm. Heather and I had agreed ... it had been a heady experience being the arm candy that night. Not that we were really treated as arm candy, mind you. Nah. At these kinds of things in a place like DC, even the arm candy was expected to sparkle with opinions and flavor. Within social reason, of course. It had been a blast but then I got the sense that being with Terry in such situations meant never really being left out there on your own. He was always quick to step into the void, often with a well-delivered if serious observation to some bigwig who had me on the verge of really discussing politics except I was fighting that urge with all my might lest I offend rather than help Terry's cause.

God, but could he be any sexier? Smart man, smart body, smart heart ... and in a smart tux? Oh my.

As I made my way back after my phone call, I was standing there just inside the doorway, sipping on champagne that I'd snagged from a passing waiter. It felt like spying on them. I was standing about six tables from ours. Dino was sitting at the table, which was right along the dance floor's edge, leaning back in his chair, his fingers twirling a glass I knew held scotch. His eyes were soft on Terry and Heather as they danced cheek-to-cheek to a slow, mellow tune.

The three of them were such friends. A circle that seemed to bring out a side to Terry that I hadn't done much more than glimpse at before. He just seemed relaxed with them when not worrying about whether or not they'd like me. And they both seemed to worry over him a bit ... it was like he had taken me home to meet his family. For some reason, looking at them in that moment, I got a sense of the loneliness that could overtake someone living the life Terry lived.

Terry was guiding Heather with such grace and I remembered how it had felt to slow dance with him this one lazy afternoon in my loft when we'd not wanted to leave and he'd wanted to touch me in a new way.

She was wearing the perfect gown for both her figure and her personality. It was black, clingy material to show off the curves, slit on both sides, high neck in front. It was classic and sexy. And it had this low back ... I hadn't failed to notice how Dino's eyes liked looking at the way it set off her ass. Sorry. Was that crude? It sounds it but if you'd seen the way he looked at his wife ... I found it charming. As he watched the two of them move together ... Terry's mouth at Heather's ear and I just knew he was whispering naughty things to her ... Dino's tongue wet his lips and I knew what part of Heather's anatomy his eyes were really latched on watching move.

Terry caught that glazed look of satisfied perving and he very deliberately moved his hand down her back and grazed down to cup said derriere. He met Dino's eyes... Terry not at all trying to hid this devilish grin and Dino not able to hide his amusement even though he was trying to pretend offense that another man was grabbing his wife's ass.

I loved the moment. The three of them interacting. Like I got a glimpse inside a purity of their relationship without any of them realizing I was watching.

The moment ended when Dino sauntered from his seat and broke into the dance. Terry smoothly transferred Heather to her husband and then he backed away to the table. Somehow I knew he had gotten in one parting shot at his friend.

It made me smile. 

I was still standing there, grinning, when Terry suddenly turned and looked around. Then his eyes zeroed in on me. It made my breath catch. I felt caught ... like this laser beam held me in an unbreakable hold as he walked slowly toward me.

Details came to me like flash cards. The shine of his shoes. The way his jacket swayed as he walked. The way his tie pulled my eyes to his neck and then up to his chin. How his hair was so neat and almost severe. The clean look to his jaw line. The whiteness of his crisp shirt and the contrast of the black studs. The peek of white cuffs against stark black of the jacket's sleeves. The classic lines of the tux over the man whose body set mine on fire.

His eyes. The way they dared me to stop looking at him. His mouth. The way his lips parted as he neared me and it wasn't to talk to me ... it was a breath he took for me.

I took this deep swallow when he was nearly at me and I know he saw the instant flare of panic that flushed my body.

He was just such a man.

Sometimes the reality of him could overwhelm me and leave me helpless. Like just then. And then his body was right in front of mine and his hand was on my back and his mouth was near my lips and ... and ... and I was just never going to be able to resist him. Ever.

"Let's step outside," he said softly. Hand in mine. Leading the way. Knowing what he was doing. Taking me to the balcony off the ballroom and taking me in his arms to dance with me under the moon and the stars ... without another word.

Details. Especially the feel of his shirt ... starched ... against the fabric that covered my breasts ... my dress cut to accent the rise of my breasts yet never salacious ... the fabric was the sheerest black velvet intercut with voile in this way that gave an illusion I might have been showing more than I was. Reminiscent of a Grecian style of gown. A neckline that showed off the simple diamond and emerald drop necklace he'd produced that evening after I'd dressed ... asking me to turn around and when I did, he slipped it around my neck and then kissed the skin at my nape over where his fingers had closed the clasp. I had stood there in his arms and leaned back into his chest and said, "What have you done?" and known it was something sweet and grand.

And then he'd drawn me over to the mirror and I'd seen his face and watched how he regarded me. And only then did I look at the necklace and when I did, my fingers slipped up there to touch it and I said, "You shouldn't do things like this for me. You'll spoil me."

And he had said with such sincerity, "Who wouldn't want to spoil you?"

No one ever had before. Other men have given me gifts, done nice things ... but none had done them with his style and grace. None had done it just because it gave him pleasure ... Terry gave me cheap trinkets and grand extravagances with the same degree of enjoyment at my reaction.

So here we were. Finally finding the moment to slow dance that night. His body pressed to mine and my lips wished nothing more than to feel his. Swaying there together and no one else even seemed to be alive just then. And when the dance was over, his mouth was near my ear but he wasn't talking to me. I nestled into his chest and put my arms around his waist, under his jacket, burrowing for warmth in the cold of that balcony.

And then he was whispering to me ... he was glad that I was there with him. He longed to sleep with me in his bed. How much he liked the feel of me against him. How he wouldn't mind leaving just then ...

His lips were warm against my forehead and they were hot against my mouth. I felt the press of his thumbs against the rise of my breasts as he rubbed me lightly and I simply let him feel me as he wished. I knew he'd not go too far in these esteemed surroundings and it thrilled me to let him push it just a bit. By the time he led me back to the table, I imagine I was flushed with all that was him and the promise of what our time together after this event would be.

On the drive home, I snuggled back in the seat and listened to soft jazz on the radio and watched the neon lights pass by. He held my hand as he drove and I dreamed of the night ahead and how it would feel to lie in his bed. And then he parked in front of a house and I knew before he opened his mouth that we were stopping by Dino and Heather's before I ever had a chance with having him alone.

Just a nightcap, he said. They like you, he added. Whew, I said and smirked at him. So I'd passed a test and wondered what new ones were ahead.

We were walking to the door and I peeked inside the front window. Dino was standing in his living room, his tie undone, holding a small, sleepy boy with red hair. Dino whispering in his son's ear and his son hanging onto his dad's neck like he would never let go. This look between them that spoke volumes.

Is there anything sexier than a man who can hold his child like that? I don't know what it is ... but just seeing a man who obviously enjoys being a father ... it just seems ... manly.

This soft scene between father and son ended as soon as Terry came through the door. Andrew ... Andy ... his face burst into a mischievous grin and he gurgled out, "Uncle Terry!" as he reached out little hands for the man I was with.

Loved it. Who wouldn't? Well, so Heather moaned to Terry not to wind up young Andy because he needed to be in bed ... and Dino gave Terry a further warning to be of some help by getting Andy settled for the night while Dino took the sitter home.

And I watched as Terry schlupped off down the hall with Andy in his arms, totally forgetting I was even there. I trailed in behind Heather into the kitchen to start coffee and set out a few snacks and glasses for nightcaps for when the men joined us again. I kept looking at the doorway, expecting to see Terry there, but eventually Heather said, go on and check in Andy's room. See if you can convince Terry to go easy on us for a change and get Andy down for the night.

I wandered down the hall and found Andy's room. Standing in the doorway, I watched Terry rocking the boy, reading to him ... Terry engrossed in the book and Andy sleepily clinging to his uncle. They both saw me at the same time and when Andy reached for me, I went to him and rocked him in my arms as I whispered in his ear ... 'you ready for bed, my big man?' ... and he smiled softly at me and you do just seem to know when kids have a need for a lay down, don't you?

He was okay only as long as we were both there, hovering over his bed, obvious in our intent to stand there with him as long as it took for him to sleep. Thank God he dropped off quickly because he missed the kiss his uncle planted on me. It was not one suitable for a PG audience.

I spent the rest of the evening feeling like I was watching from the outside. Mostly it was because I was tired; hadn't really slept since Terry had first asked me to come up there the day before. And then just the weight of what the time in DC with him had meant to me ... it felt comfortable there in Dino and Heather's home to just crash among friends, my head on Terry's shoulder and his hand casually holding mine as he and Dino compared notes on the contacts they'd made that night.

When we left their home, we sat in the car for a while before we actually took off. Mainly, it was my fault. I put my hand over his as he worked the shift into neutral to start the car ... gave him this soft smile ... and then leaned over to kiss him as I crawled into his lap. We whispered these things to each other ... about what a great night it had been ...

And then we both blurted out something important to each other ... said them right on top of the other person's serious words and then had to stop and I think inside us, each of us was saying, 'Whoa!'

I had said: "I can't have children."

He had said: "I love you."

We had both then said: "What?"

"Me first, Terry, because it rather affects ... well, everything, I think." After this uncomfortable pause, I leaned in and laid my head on his shoulder. "Gee, there's never really a good time to tell someone that. I didn't know when to tell you. I'm sorry. I just didn't think it could wait any longer."

"Why are you telling me this tonight?"

"Because ... seeing you with sweet Andy tonight... I realized you're one of those men who will want a family of his own someday. And I can't give you one and I expect, like most men, that changes things for you."

I could only tell him this because I wasn't looking at him. His arms around me gave me comfort even while his demeanor was unreadable to me. He didn't say anything and I wasn't sure what to do. Tears stung at my eyes and my fingers toyed nervously with the ends of his untied tie.

"Am I the only woman you're dating right now?" I whispered to him eventually. Felt him nod against me. "Then you needed to know this before you start thinking you really love me, see? Because you need to keep looking around more. You need to get out there and date other women, Terry. The perfect one for you is still out there. Someone you can build a life with, get married, have kids ... That's not me and if you've even once thought it might be, then I owed it to you for you to know this."

"You don't know me that well yet, Annie. And you sure as hell don't have the right to make that kind of decision for me. You're assuming I want children. You're assuming that if I do, that desire is more important than the desire I might have to love you. I make my own decisions, not you."

I sat up and met the fire in his eyes, that stern look about his lips. "I didn't mean to piss you off, Terry. And, yeah, I am assuming you want children. Are you saying you don't?"

"I'm saying maybe it doesn't matter to me. That maybe I already suspected it about you and it never has mattered." His hand rubbed in below my belly button. "Maybe I figured this scar here meant something."

"Stop." I whispered it to him and tried to crawl away but he wouldn't let me go. "Why would you have guessed from one little scar?"

His eyes darted away from mine but he still answered me straight back. "When we first met ... I told you I did a background check. You'd be surprised what shows up. Every run in with law enforcement. Court filings. Lots of things."

"Oh God. No. Please say you don't know."

"Annie ..." Something in him shifted and I swear his eyes were so soft when he looked at me again. And I also swear that it's the reason I found myself letting him hug me in to his chest and hold me like he needed to comfort me from a past I would never have told him about. And long minutes later, he broke the silence between us the only way he could think of: "I already have a child. Wasn't such a good father to him, truthfully."

He told me about Henry, his teenage son. I suggested that maybe whatever mistakes he'd made were understandable if you look at where he had been in terms of maturity and emotion. That maybe now, years older and wiser, he'd find himself being the father he'd always wanted to be with another baby. That giving up that chance wasn't something he should do based only on his current desire to keep me in his life.

"I'm not going anywhere, Terry. I promise. And I promise that when you find that perfect woman, I'll be happy for you."

"But I have found her," he whispered to me, his eyes searching mine. "She's here in my arms."

The way he said it. It made me cry these soft little tears and I was biting my lip to keep it from quivering. When his hands took my face and gently pulled me to him for a kiss, I started shaking. But as he kissed me ... carefully, with meaning ... the shakes left me and I felt a stab of pure, naked desire for him. We made love right there on this residential street and never seemed to care that what we were doing might have been inappropriate. We made love simply and yet with such depth between us ... him just sliding my panties aside and me just lowering his zipper to free him. We made love with the words between us being nothing more than, 'I love you' spoken as if it was a marvelous gift we gave the other.

And even sharing his bed later, I still found it hard to quite believe it was possible that it would be this easy. Do you have any idea of what the revelation of my inability to have children has been like for other men to hear? They either think I'm asking for a commitment and they run away at the first chance ... or they figure I'm the fun time gal they can fuck until the good girl they will marry comes along ... or they cut and run because I've just turned out to be a dud ... or they make me feel like I've been right all along, that I'm somehow less than other women because of this one thing that shouldn't mean what it does, but it does anyway. Dave was the only man who never made me feel that way but he knew me from before I was damaged goods.

And this man Terry ... he came into my life with no warning and I don't know that I was ever ready for the way he changed it. He took my shame and made it disappear with this matter-of-fact way he had of seeing in then simply dismissing it like it meant nothing to him. And for so long, I was able to do the same thing.