Lying In Bed

August 28, 2004

"Tell me the story..." he said.

We were lying in bed, making love. I pretended that I hadn't heard him and instead breathed in the sweet smell of his hair mixed with the rougher smell of his skin slicked with sweat. I licked the part of his salty neck that was pressed closest to my mouth. The tendons were hard ropes against my tongue.

I hoped this would distract him but it didn't and he asked again: "Tell me. Who is he?"

The words came from his mouth, but I heard them first between my legs, where they halted the faint and faraway sensations that I had been hoping would, like a tight bud, open and flower.

Until five words ago, it had been only sensations that had my attention. (You know how it feels, not like a pain that you can pinpoint but a breeze of stinging electric-blue pleasure surging through you.) Now it was his question that I felt. So intrusive it repeated itself. If not actually, then in my mind. Drawing my thoughts where I did not want them to go.

I needed to focus, to keep my mind in the present, to stay and not slip backward. Focus, I told myself. On being here. Now.

I ... read full excerpt from: Lying in Bed ebook