Answer to a Riddle

“You have fallen into brooding,” she said in a soft voice. At her insistence, we sat together on the sofa to talk. “You’ve been like this for many months, now. So, tell me about it.” This beautiful woman, who could have had any man in the world, had long ago chosen me. She has continued to choose me every day of our lives together. We have been lovers, friends, and parents of two girls, now young women away at college. Like anybody, we have had rough times and easy times, happy and sad, things we celebrated and things we kept secret.

We have had one secret that is not like most anybody else’s. More correctly, it has been my secret. Amazingly, she has allowed me to share it with her all this time without running away. From the deep recesses of my soul, from time to time, a special need arises. Not something even remotely part of her own nature, she nevertheless accommodates me, temporarily adopts the reciprocal side of my nature, and enters with me into a hidden chamber of our love.

“It all seems so selfish of me,” I said. “I use you to get what I want.”

She smiled at that. “Is that so unusual? Do you think nobody else does that?”

“All of us do that,” I admitted. “The dishonesty is what bothers me.”

“Dishonesty? What dishonesty? Who is being dishonest here?”

“I am,” I said in a quiet tone of admitting guilt.

She suddenly laughed out loud and looked away. I can’t stand it when she does that—laughs and looks away, dismissing me as some silly person. But, then, maybe I am. Maybe I am just some silly person.

Sensing my hurt, she reconnected with me, looked into my eyes. Her eyes are bright blue with tiny flecks of brown, which makes them appear hazel at times, or gold at other times, depending on the light. When she looks directly into me, I feel the penetration all the way to my core. Sometimes, it is too much for me to bear, that invasion into all my secret places. At those times, I have to look away.

“Don’t look away,” she said quietly, sensing that I was about to. She moved closer to me on the sofa.

I surrendered to her look, and soon felt it pierce all my defenses, entering me, exploring. She moved closer. Her breath lightly brushed my face. My interior resistance to her gaze gave way, and I welcomed her into me for the first time in many months. During that time, our sex had been low-key, sometimes mechanical. Now, I wanted here there, within me, and yearned to be taken by her from the inside out.

“Why is it dishonest?” she finally said and couched my face in her hands, still looking into me.

“When I surrender to you, am I truly giving to you? Yes, I am having my needs filled, all the while pretending to be offering myself as a gift. When you fill my need, what am I giving you in return? How am I filling any need of yours?”

She sat back, moved away from me on the sofa, and continued to hold me with her gaze. I was drawn into an oval face with a thousand tiny freckles, lush red hair falling over bare, freckled shoulders, and her subtle features of petite femininity suggested by the casual flow of a light summer dress—and by those blue eyes with tiny flecks of brown. I had to look away.

“I told you not to do that,” she reminded me.

“Yes, Mmmm. Please forgive me,” I said, and resumed my visual submission to her.

It is my name for her when we are engaged in our secret play. I had not used it in while. Mmmm—more than a name, it is also a primordial chant that begins deep within me and emanates outward, pronouncing some ancient human sound—perhaps the sound of being nourished, or the sound of pleading, or the sound of acquiescence, or acceptance, or maybe all of them put together. Now that I had used it, as we had agreed so long ago, I was hers—until she should release me.

“Stand, my bully boy,” she said, her facial expression offering no emotion. “Unbuckle and let them fall. Underpants too.”

I stood and bared myself to her as instructed. Unfastened trousers fell around my ankles, covering socks and shoes. My erection rapidly rose and protruded between shirttails. She caressed its underside in her palm and lightly teased the tip with her thumb.

“Tell me, my bully boy. Does the honeybee use the blossom? Or, does the blossom use the honeybee?”

Through the sensations of what she was doing, I did manage to focus on what she had asked, but had no answer to the question.

“They are using each other, I suppose.” My voice was shaky.

She moved her thumb, its pad now coated with slippery dew, over the head to the corona where, barely touching, she teased with a slow side-to-side motion.

“Please, Mmmm,” I whispered, my knees wanting to buckle.

“Please, what, my bully boy?”

We had learned in our many sessions of play through our years together that when she held my erection in her palm and teased the corona with her thumb, I had never been able to last long.

“Please help me endure. If you keep touching me that way, I will fail you.”

“Maybe, this time, I don’t choose to have you endure,” she said. “Maybe it would please me to have you fail.”

“If it pleases you, Mmmm,” I whined as I felt my undoing approach.

She stopped. She told me to kneel on the coffee table. On all fours, I faced away from her, gripping the far edge of the table with my hands, my legs hanging over the edge toward her. She pulled my shoes and socks off, but left the pants and underpants bunched around my ankles. She pushed my shirt up my torso until it draped over my head. The material veiled my vision, and I felt my own breath coming back in my face.

After a long wait, my leg jerked when she lightly touched a fingernail to the sole of my foot. “Endure,” she said, and then touched me again.

I was able to keep my foot in place, while the rest of my body writhed in response to her tickling torment.

She giggled behind me. “This is fun, bully boy. You offer me so many different views of yourself as you thrash around, your ass changing into so many shapes and configurations, your balls bouncing in their furry bag.”

“Yes, Mmmm,” I said through ragged breath. “I hope I please you.”

“Oh, it does please me.”

She touched the other foot. At first, I jerked it away, but then quickly put it back in position, and she put me through another session of writhing to her touch. She suddenly attacked both soles with increased pressure, forcing me to laugh uncontrollably and then to draw my feet under me.

“So much for that,” she said. “But that’s okay, bully boy. It is fun to watch you try so hard to endure, and then only to fail so miserably.”

“Yes, Mmmm,” I said as my head drooped within the draped shirt, where heat built up as I tried to catch my breath. I placed me feet back where they had been.

She grabbed my testicles. My balls rose up, tried to escape, but her grip was sure, and she pulled them down. “You did not answer correctly,” she said. “Would you like to try again? Or, do you even remember the riddle?”

“Please forgive me, Mmmm. I’ve forgotten your question.”

She chuckled. She abruptly squeezed my testicles, making me gasp. “Does the honeybee use the blossom? Or, does the blossom use the honeybee?”

I thought about it for a moment, but could not remember how I had actually answered it before. I said nothing. Another, harder squeeze brought another gasp and inspired me to remember: I had suggested that the honeybee and the blossom used each other, which had been incorrect Still, I did not know the answer. I said nothing.

She let go of my testicles. “You hold onto your own balls,” she said.

“Yes, Mmmm,” I said as I shifted my weight to one hand and reached between my legs with the other.

I felt her doing something with the clothing bunched around my ankles. I heard the jingle of my belt buckle, then the sliding of leather against fabric and little whispers made by the end of the belt as it cleared loops.

“We don’t want to damage anything important, do we, my bully boy. Put your forehead down on the table and use both hands to hold onto your little bag of goodies.”

“Yes, Mmmm.”

“So, what’s your answer?”

“Please forgive me. I don’t know the correct answer, Mmmm.”

“You will have to do better than that,” she said. “Count for me.”

Because the arc of her swing was straight over the top, the looped belt landed parallel to the crease and then wrapped into a fiery pool on the upper curve of my ass. She gave me a series of five, ten, fifteen, and then twenty—fifty in all. With each series, she increased the force of the strokes. Between the series she allowed a waiting period to give flesh the opportunity to appreciate what was being done to it. For the final twenty, my grunted counting turned into high-pitched whimpers.

“Well?” She said breathily. “Have you thought of the answer?” I heard her slide back in the sofa to rest from her labors. She allowed me time to settle, and then asked me again for an answer.

“The blossom,” I guessed, my voice little more than a squeak.

“And why the blossom, my bully boy? Why not the honeybee?”

“The blossom has a need,” I said. “Its need is have things done to it. It uses the honeybee to fill that need, just as I use you to do things to me—to fill my need.”

She laughed, not the laugh of enjoyment, but the laugh of mockery. Disappointment fell about me. My upper buttocks, already aflame, twitched in anticipation of more fire. She did nothing. “That is not the answer,” she finally said.

I heard her put the belt down on the coffee table and get up from the sofa. She came around to my side of the table. From just beyond the draped shirt came the sound of her removing her summer dress and panties and dropping them on the floor. The table flexed slightly as she climbed onto it over my head. Facing back toward the sofa, she placed her feet on either side of me, her heels snug against my upper arms. I could feel her heat as she lowered herself toward my back. She stayed in a squat just above me, a few strands of her female fur tickling me. With her nails, she stirred the hot embers that continued to smolder on my upper buttocks. Then, she lowered her full weight down onto me. Her sex, warm and moist, caressed the middle of my spine in a succulent kiss.

“This is the answer to the riddle. Are you listening, bully boy?”

“Yes, Mmmm.”

“You confuse our love for each other with the world of commerce, where you are so much at home. In the business world, you use other people and other people use you. There is nothing wrong with it, nor is there anything right with it. It is just the nature of that world. Everybody understands it, and it works well much of the time. That is why you do well there. You understand very well how people use each other to reach goals, and it has a lot of rules to keep things going. Love, if it is pure, is not like that, bully boy. Pure love has no angles, or rules, or selfish intent. So, now do you know the correct answer?”

I did not know the answer. I felt complete shame at my obvious ignorance of love, and I told her so. She softly caressed the area she had belted and soothingly coached me to relax.

“The answer is that neither the honeybee nor the blossom are using each other. Nobody is using anybody. In living its own nature, each is also bringing to life the nature that is common to them. Do you understand now? Our love is pure love, or at least we try to purify it. You tend to think of it as utilitarian. Like the honeybee and the blossom, pure love has nothing to do with using. It has everything to do with creating, simply by living one’s nature.”

“Yes, I understand now.”

I heard the clink of the buckle as she picked up the belt. “Are you ready, now, bully boy?” Her voice wavered. “Ready for me to purify your love?”

Before I could answer, fire rained down. It followed the curve of my ass like the flow of molten lava, curling to the underside where it pooled and burned into my flesh. I cried out, first in surprise at the intensity, then in terror, then in prolonged anguish. I heard my cries mingle with incomprehensible words and phrases. My face, and the shirt that covered it, grew damp with tears and slobber.

The mind, looking for a place to hide from such an experience, busied itself in constructing a third-person image of the event. A man—a normally distinguished, self-confident, middle-aged man—now quaking, naked but for trousers bunched around his ankles and a shirt draped over his head, knelt on a coffee table, protecting his genitals with both hands, his forehead resting on the edge, his buttocks high up and vulnerable. A woman—a naked goddess—a red-haired woman, freckled complexion flushed with exertion and excitement, facing backward, sat on his back. From her perch, she was rapidly swinging straight down on him in a frenzy with a looped belt that followed the curve of his ass to the tender underside, over and over, each stroke swishing and then making a loud THWACK in the area where thighs and cheeks and creases all came together. The man, lurching and jerking, was locked in the terrible struggle between the need to endure for her and the need to flee for himself. She, whipping him on with abandon, rode the bucking, sweaty slope of his back. In the throes of excitement, she leaned forward, spread her thighs wide and pushed down on him with her abdomen, flattening her opened sex on the bumpy contour of the spine, the flexing muscles, the stretching sinews, as if they had conjoined into features of a single massive cock…

I realized the distant sound of a bawling animal had finally ceased, and now was replaced with my sobs and broken breathing. She had thrown the belt away. I had heard it whack against the wall and fall to the floor behind the sofa. I continued to writhe against the fire, which now took on a different kind of intensity as she grabbed my buttocks and dug into my flesh with her nails. I heard the clucking sound of her sex sliding up and down my mid-back, widening in response to her downward pressure, like a serpent’s mouth unhinged, as if she wanted to swallow me whole, take me into her womb. She suddenly cried out once, wailing up at the ceiling. It echoed briefly through the house. She collapsed on me, hugging me around my thighs, then kissed down into my crease and to the area she had been punishing, where she added more punishment with her teeth.

“Turn over,” she said in a pleading tone as she swung one leg off me.

As soon as I was over on my back, my feet on the sofa, my hips on one edge of the coffee table, and my shoulders at the other edge, she swung back over me, this time facing me.

“Yes, just like that,” she whimpered, forced to me to let go of my scrotum, grabbed my erection and put it inside her.

Face crimson, eyes crazed, hair flying, she rode me, her hands gripping the edge of the table near my shoulders. With her sex so ripened, my penetration soon discovered the teasing tip of her cervix. I shied away from it, knowing from experience that the power of its touch would quickly undo me. She raised her head up, stretching her neck and throat above me, and whined incoherently over and over in time to her movements. Her perfect little breasts juggled and quaked and shook. I stilled one of them by capturing the berry nipple with my teeth and gently holding it prisoner. As before, she suddenly wailed up toward the ceiling. She fell on me. Her cervix planted itself on the corona of my cock. Another loud wail filled the room and echoed through the house—whether it came from her, or me, or both of us at once, I do not know.