* * * * * *
Arun Patil had become a fixture at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. In saving her life, he felt he had taken on some sort of obligation. With her sister-in-law unable to face her and her husband barred on doctors' orders from her hospital room, he was the one who sat by Felicity's bedside, refilled her water pitcher, and just held her hand. His brother and uncle picked up the slack at Café Tandoor while he ferried her kids between their aunt's house and daily visits to see their mother. When she was released a month after the shooting, he drove her home.
The truth was, he needed her too. No one else would ever share those moments of panic and terror. At first, they went over the shooting again and again. What the robber said, and how he said it. Had she not moved fast enough to hand her bag over? Had he not made it clear he wouldn't offer any resistance? Her willingness to have him around, her wanting him around, assuaged Arun's guilt. Irrational guilt, but guilt nonetheless. And where's the end of it? The end of guilt? The end of kindness? The end of being alone except for each other with a terrible memory? It never ended, just continued into a new chapter one night when the kids were all in bed and a bottle of wine led to a kiss, a kiss to a caress, a caress to an unspoken invitation to take one another's hand and walk to the bedroom, both of them knowing that what would happen behind that closed door would mean there would be no end to their needing each other. No end to it ever. Wine-fueled, fumbling kisses as clothes were quickly discarded and cast aside, fingers grazing the still-tender scar tissue as shirts and dresses slid from bodies and onto the floor. Wine-warmed and wine-wet, Felicity was ready for him as soon as he was on top of her, with the smooth head of his uncut cock, its moisture mixing with hers as he slid effortlessly inside her, feeling himself engulfed by her, all of their limbs seeming to touch everywhere at once as they kissed and fucked and fucked and kissed. Messed up by the wine and the emotion, they laughed and cried as Arun rocked into her again and again, her thin, lithe body pressing up to meet his downward thrusts, the pace quickening moment by moment until Arun felt a feeling he hadn't felt in so long, his body tightening, the electric focus of his energy on the warm spot where their bodies came together. They didn't come together, not that night at least. There was no time for synchronization, just Felicity's fingers pressed into the muscles of his ass, urging him on, urging him to thrust harder and faster, to come inside her. With one more thrust, he gave her what she, and he, wanted, what they both needed, a momentary release, a measure of solace in their satiation.
******
Felicity looked at the envelope her divorce attorney had forwarded to her. There, across the back flap, Dave had written "Losing is for suckers." It was one of his little catch phrases, not particularly one of her favorites. Still, she had to acknowledge it was just the flip side of the confidence that had initially attracted her to him. The letter had come with the news that he didn't intend to sign the divorce papers, that he didn't want a divorce, no matter the terms. That has been a surprise. As soon as she was strong enough to talk a bit, one of the nurses had given her the name of a good attorney. In exchange for her not calling his boss to say who and what he had been doing on his company's time, Dave had agreed to a legal separation with spousal and child support. He was out of the house with new locks on the doors by the time she got out of the hospital. Custody and visitation had been a non-issue. Obsessed with her body when she was pregnant, Dave had never been a very interested father, had barely visited the kids at his sisters while Felicity was in the hospital. He had been so accommodating that she was blindsided when he didn't sign the divorce paper the day he was served. But losing was for suckers; if the marriage was going to end, his ego could only stand him being the one to end it.
"Felicity,
I know you are pushing for this divorce, but I'm hoping you'll agree to give me a second chance if you just understand where I'm coming from and why I did what I did. I've been seeing a counselor, trying to understand why I made the choices I made. She said I should write to you, just tell you the whole story from the beginning. . ."
Felicity had barely been able to continue, laughing and crying at the same time made her chest ache. She wasn't sure what was more outrageous: that Dave Paterson was seeing a therapist, or that someone really thought telling her all the details of "why" he had been shacked up in a hotel with multiple women in one day was going to change what she thought: that he was a lying, cheating dirtbag who couldn't keep his dick in his pants. She riffled through the letter; it was way too many pages to boil down to "I'm a dog."
It all started, he wrote, at a party he went to the summer after high school. His best friend Trevor had showed up with a girl he was seeing and her best friend, who he was convinced would be "all over" Dave. He had not been wrong. Tiffany--but she wanted him to call her by her "Druid name," Elowen--was indeed all over him and that without a drink or drug in her. The party had convened around a few kegs in an open field surrounded by nothing much of anything for miles. Tiffany/Elowen, who had entwined her fingers with his and was staring at him earnestly as she explained her "deep connection with the natural world," within five minutes of meeting him. "I know it sounds crazy, but I get out around trees and plants and all my atoms just start vibrating with life, you know. Like, my whole body gets hot with energy." Dave thought that yes, it did sound crazy, but Tiffany, who he was happy to call Elowen if it upped the chances of his getting in her pants, was indeed very, very hot. As she leaned into him, he had a clear view down her tank top, and with no bra underneath, her pert little tits and bright pink nipples, a view that, along with the fact that her skirt was so short he could see her panties underneath, had certain parts of his body vibrating with life as well. Trevor's girl had taken off, taking Elowen with her before Dave had a chance to walk her away from the group congregating around the kegs, the music, and the bonfire, but not before he got her number.
Elowen had indeed made his body vibrate in interesting ways that summer after their senior year before he headed off for college, and she stayed in town for community college. Dave's parents had backed off supervising his comings and goings since he had turned 18, and Elowen's parents seemed to have the same attitude, but even so there was no need to find a time when one of their houses would be empty of parental units. Since she was only interested in getting naked out in nature, any secluded spot with trees and grass would do for that. There were plenty of fields and state parks around that offered them all the privacy they needed. On their first real date, he had bought her a Slurpee and taken her out for a walk on a park trail. On the first private grassy area they found, just a ways off the trail, he was soon slurping on her tits, the nipples turning hard and bumpy in his mouth as she rubbed his cock through his shorts and moaned her encouragement.
They returned to the same spot on their second date. He had wanted to take her out to eat--it seemed like the right thing to do--but she explained she was a vegan and there weren't too many places she could eat. So after stopping for a Snapple, she was soon naked on her back in the grass, with Dave tongue-deep in her crotch, licking her for all he was worth. He'd never met a girl like her before, who talked like her, like she wasn't afraid to like what she was liking, "Oh, Dave," she had moaned, "lick me, make me come, I want to soak the ground with my nectar." Dave wasn't sure what that was all about, but he liked the feel of her fingers running through her hair and her fingernails on his upper back as she lifted her ass off the ground to meet his waiting mouth. "That's right, lick my clit, make me come, I'm so close." He circled her engorged clit with a quick, motion, even as two fingers of his hand pumped in and out of her welcoming cunt until she was moaning out her approval and he could feel the soft, warm walls of her clamping down rhythmically against his fingers.
As they lay together in the grasss, her naked except for a small top, him still dressed, she explained that in her "Druid" beliefs, people had the responsibility to give their "sexual emanations" back to the Earth, that a woman's fluids blessed the planet, while a man's fertilized it. Dave had looked up Druids on the Internet and was sure that everything she was saying was a load of crap, but he was also pretty sure that he was about to get some action for himself, so he kept his opinions to himself. In a moment, he was standing, Elowen on the ground on her knees in front of him. "So I'm not going to swallow, you know? Not because it's gross, but because the Earth needs your energy more than I do." With that by way of introduction, she had begun by licking the smooth head of his cut cock, humming a little to herself as she did. He watched as her sharp, pink little tongue darted out again and again, licking and teasing his head. He dripped with precum and she brought her mouth close and rubbed her lips against his head, like a girl applying lip gloss before thanking him for the "gift of his sap, like the lifeblood of a tree." He almost laughed then, except that she was taking him full in her mouth, her lips warm and wet around him as she slid up and down his shaft. There was nothing funny at looking down at a beautiful girl, her wild dirty-blonde hair loose around her shoulders as she pumped his cock with her mouth and her hand at the same time, and it didn't take long before he felt the familiar sensation in his groin that told him he was about to come. "I'm coming, baby, I'm coming," he had warned her, giving her time to pull away as his cum arced out and away from him onto the green grass. When he finished, she carefully licked his head again, removing every trace of his orgasm as delicately as if she were licking honey from a spoon.
Trevor tried from time to time to get him to talk about what was up as the summer months sped by, but Dave wasn't talking. Crazy made-up bullshit or not, every time he got into the car with Elowen--he couldn't even think of her as Tiffany any more, although that was the name he had to use when he came to her house to pick her up for a date--he knew how the night would end, with him fully, completely, and totally Druidically satisfied. "I'm here to pick up Tiffany," he would say, as Elowen would drift down the stairs in a summery sundress or something else that could quickly be removed as soon as they found a shaded, quiet spot. In some ways, their time together became like a ritual. They would talk about nothing in particular as they drove out into the country, until one of them would point and say, "There." Words were no longer necessary. Just a touch, just a glance, Elowen would drop her dress and panties as he stripped out of his shorts and t-shirt. Both of them facing a tree, he could feel her warm, naked body pressed up against his backside as she coated her fingers with oil and began caressing his cock, running her fingers in a tickling motion up and down his already-hard shaft before she gripped his left hipbone tightly in her left hand and began jacking him off with her right hand. Without words, she learned to read his body's signals, knowing when to back off to prolong his pleasure, to slow or even stop when he was on the verge of climaxing until the orgasm was unstoppable, and he would come, shaking, shuddering "blessing the Earth with his seed."
