I grabbed the cups of her bra and pulled them down, her breasts spilled out, I pushed the bra up under the breasts, the small pink nipples were exposed. I'd always thought they were perfectly sized for her breasts, they always were. I wrapped my mouth around her nipple and circled her small, impossibly pink areole with my tongue. With the thumb and forefinger of my right hand I played, gently, with her left nipple. They both responded and became hard, when they were hard I played with them more slowly, stopping to blow upon her right nipple, moving between the two. I could hear her breathing, more ragged, less assured than it had been.
"I feel it." She said, breathlessly.
"Could you?"
"No, not quite."
"May I?"
"Yes." Alice was breathing heavily now, so was I.
I nuzzled her beautiful stomach, smelling, kissing, I pulled her black underwear down, she lifted her legs, I pulled them all the way off and threw them away. She lay there with her shirt pulled up, bra pulled down, and naked from the waist down. She enjoyed being exposed like this, I could tell. We had been friends since we were children, we were now just thirty, we had heard everything about our love lives. Tonight, though, tonight she was mine and I was hers.
We needed sound, we needed sound. I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and pressed play on what I was last listening to. "nothing is holy." The song said, "Nothing is sacred." I plied my palm on mons pubis, her venus mound, exposing her clitoris.
She writhed, she writhed and moaned then her legs became rigid and she became still apart from the rhythmic, almost imperceptible movements of her hips against my tongue. Alice shuddered, finally, as the song finished.
"Do it!" A forceful whisper burst forth from her lips. "Please, please."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, will you? Please?"
The first chords struck up, as I felt her rough, then slick, then silk, then enveloping. "Ave Maria, Gratia plena." I did not last long, we gripped each other close, breathing deeply into each other's faces, I could feel her breath on my eyes and cheeks, and in my mouth.
"Again?" I said, breathless. "Again" was the reply. I kissed her, for the first time, our tongues touched and it was fire again, an apocalypse in fire, my masculinity raged. Alice finally pulled her t-shirt and bra off, I shook out of my jeans, we made love, we moved positions and writhed around each other, like mating snakes.
Before I knew it I lay there, the world now in slow motion. One eternal moment stretched out ahead of me as far as I could possibly see. The whole of creation kept time with Franz Schubert. The exquisite peach, the bisecting teardrops of her divine arse faced me, beaded with sweat even on this cool February night with the windows thrown open in Venice. Alice bathed me in her love as the song reached it's climax, I came again.
No food could taste so sweet, no wine could intoxicate as potently, no touch of any goddess could possible be more sublime.
We lay next to each other for a long time, locking eyes for a long time. We both wondered what we had just done, Alice was less confused than I, but still confused. I smiled and chuckled, it was funny that we were both going through the motions, we both knew our friendship was not done, we would never be free of each other. I laughed, she laughed, her breasts bobbed as she laughed and she cupped them, arresting their movement. I sat up, grabbing her t-shirt, I handed it to her, I looked away, knowing we were friends again. We fell asleep facing away from each other, we needed the sleep.
We knew there was no need, no chance, no one had taken advantage of anyone else, Life is sacred and connections, friendship, true friendship is so rare that it is the only thing I know that is sacred. No, that's not right, it isn't sacred, nothing is. It is the only thing that can be sacred, the only thing that orbits the lonely star of "sacred." What we didn't appreciate is that life is water, not stone, and things can change, so many things can change.
