sunset

you are the kind of affliction
slow to heal
and
uncommonly
beautiful

a sunset
all reds and orange
perpetually disappearing

(and almost always worth getting up to see
at 4 in the morning
when the rest of the world
is smartly sleeping)

close friends

It is dark.

You are on your knees.

And I am standing in front of you.

My warm hand brushes your cheek and before finding a grip in your hair at the nape of your neck, holding you in place while my free hand draws a delicate line down the length of your bared throat.

You are pulled to your feet. Settled into a strong chair, and tied in place.

…

Your hands are bound along the back side of the chair. And I have placed…her, on a chair at your back, facing away. She is close enough that you can feel her hair brush the back of your neck as she breathes.

I lower the lights even further until it’s too dark to see exactly what I am doing – just a dark silhouette moving.

You don’t struggle. Much.

My hands slide along the back of your bared legs. Your thighs part. Your leg rests on my shoulder and you feel my breath against your skin.

Can you hear me do the same to her? The sharp intake of breath when my lips leave a trail of small kisses along the inside of her thigh until they reach the center?

Does it make you shiver to know she’s so close? To know what is being done to her? So close you can feel her shudder, feel the growing heat of her skin?

Is it hard to sit still, tied as you are, and hear the steady rustle of clothing, the surprised gasp?

She presses back into the chair behind you as if trying to escape. Her hands are tied, the same as yours; her fingers find your own, entangling themselves in a grip too strong to break. A creak of the chair. A soft mewling of desperation. Fingers clench yours.

You feel her need like your own. Neither of you can hide from the growing darkness within the room. You do understand, don’t you? I am using her to get to you.

And I am using you, to make her mine.

Does this make it worse? Knowing what is in store for you? When you hear the long shuddering breath – when you feel it, do you connect this with the fact my face is now nestled intimately between her thighs? Reminding her that there is more than one gateway to heaven?

It does. It does make it worse. No need to say it aloud. Not yet. Just sit still and feel it.

You can feel the pulses of desire through the grip she has on you. It is tearing you apart to know just how fucking close I am.

Would it help if I told you she needs it? Don’t believe me? Listen to her ragged breathing.

Need, I say, softly, right next to your ear. I can taste it on her.

An evil thought – how hauntingly decadent you would look draped over her thighs, bent and exposed – your face pressed firmly to her breasts while I stood behind you both and brought to the surface the imperfect imaginings of a perfect lust.

of feasting

There is something to the taste of bared skin.

The back of your neck is smooth, a cool expanse quickly warmed by passing lips.

Hunger is a cusp, a ledge over unsettled waters.

A deft unsnapping, unzipping, and unclothing of hips as jeans pool at your feet. One hand at your throat, a warm grip tilting your head back against my shoulder while my other presses into your hip and your ass nestles back into me.

“You make me hunger,” I say, words left against your exposed throat. My fingers rest atop the edge of your undergarments, hooking to draw them down an inch. “I am going to open you.” Another couple inches, fingertips brushing the skin between hip and thigh. “And then I am going to devour you.” An inch more, fabric now mid-thigh; impatient, I drag it the rest of the way off.

I can feel you shiver as my knee parts the back of your legs.

“And I’m going to do it right here.” I press you forward, onto all fours in front of me, the sight of your bared curves making me more than just hungry.

It makes me ravenous.

I slide to my own knees, both hands now resting on your hips. I lean closer, breath tickling the small of your back; I leave a kiss there, at the base of your spine, and then take my time in tracing the curve of your buttocks downward to your parted thighs.

The first taste is slow. I feel you lower your chest to the ground, opening yourself further as I nuzzle, tongue gently pressed against your slick heat. Gently, that is, at first. But I demand more, pressing closer, burying myself against you with intent until you find yourself moving against my face.

Abruptly, I straighten to kneel behind you, firm grip dragging you back until I am inside you, driving deep, your ass hitting my thighs. I pull back to drive deeper, again, and again.

The growl you hear is more wolf than man.

I do.

A couple of weeks ago, I officiated my second wedding. The first was for my brother. This was for a close friend.

In a wedding ceremony, there is often a moment where the officiant will spend a few minutes sharing their own thoughts on marriage. This means I’ve now written twice on a subject I’ve never been directly a part of (of course, most priests could say the same). A confirmed bachelor for life, I’m certainly not an expert on marriage.

That said – I’ve got a pretty decent working knowledge on something that’s almost more important: relationships.

And I can tell you the secret to them right here. You don’t even have to attend a wedding.

The part that might be hard to swallow for some: Every relationship is based on what each person can get out of it. We all want something from the person we are spending time with or we wouldn’t be spending time with them. It can be as simple as enjoying their company (they have great stories or a keen sense of humor) or a sense of self-satisfaction in helping someone. But at the heart of it, all relationships are based on need.

So here is the secret: Making a relationship work requires understanding what you want from it and being honest about it.

Let me back up a moment and share a story. I was having dinner with two close female friends of mine. One them, B, was complaining about her dating life and about the fact that she couldn’t sustain a long term relationship. My other friend, K, asked her how long she’d known us. In both cases, B knew K and I for several years.

‘There you go,’ K said, ‘You have at least two long term relationships in your life.’

B argued that she was speaking of romantic entanglements. We didn’t count. But we did. In reality, except for those you meet only in passing, everyone in your life has a relationship with you. Your co-workers. Your family. Your friends. Your barista at the Starbucks you frequent. These all count as relationships.

In most of these cases, the first thing I said was important – understanding what you want from a relationship – is easy. You want cooperation and respect from co-workers. Love and support from friends and family. Coffee and maybe a smile from the barista. This isn’t to say that any of those relationship couldn’t be more complex – they probably are – it just means most people know what to expect from them.

Romantic relationships tend to be harder to pin down. Love? Sex? Devotion? Partner in crime? Adoration? Supplication? Domination? A presence in your life…2 days a week? Once a month? Every day? Do you want to know where there are every night? Do you want them to not date other men? Or women?

Let’s go back to my original secret. In a perfect world, you could sit down with your partner and write out what each wants for the other. That’s not likely to happen, if only because we seldom know ourselves what we want. But let’s assume we could at least name 2-3 really important things. And let’s assume you’ve been with this person long enough to be completely honest with them (with exceptions, this isn’t really a first date discussion – there’s no need to do this if you’re still figuring out if you even really like them).

You share your mutual wants and needs, and if you both can live with this, great! It’ll take lots of work and continued communication and honesty, but I’d say you’ve got a good shot at being happy in that particular relationship.

And that’s it. That’s the secret. I’ve got a number of relationships in my life, all of which bring me happiness (or at least a measure of excitement). In many cases, the shared knowledge of wants is unspoken most of the time. But whenever there is confusion, I gladly trade a moment of potential awkwardness for understanding. Relationships change and evolve, as do our wants and needs. Sometimes those I spend a great deal of time with can no longer meet a need and we drift into a less intense, but still friendly, place.

There’s more I could add here – I’ve had more than a few occasions where my honesty has created heartache or pain. But in every case, I’d say the heartache and hurt would have been much worse down the road had I not spoken up.

What do you guys think?

betwixt

bewitched
by your smile, of course
found first
in your eyes

‘you’re hiding a devil’
said I,
‘somewhere between your smile and your words’

no words now, nor smile

just a grin.

‘Come find it’, it said.

the consequences of rhetorical questions

I had to relearn how to lace my fingers through her hair. A grip that was authoritative before painful.

I kept her trapped against the desk. “Do you remember your place?”

“H-here, master.”

Fingers brushed her nipple, caught it, tightening. Her back arched into a gasp.

“It is a yes or no question, NE.”

“Yes! Yes.”

I leaned in, “Can you feel the heat of my hand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you miss how it feels?”

“Y-yes.”

“Where do you belong?”

“Here, master.”

I roughly pulled her head to the side, my fingers biting into the inside of her thigh.”Yes or no. Where do you belong?”

Her breathing was labored, uneven. A second passed, then two. My fingers tightened in her hair “Where do you belong?”

“Yes, master.”

I smiled against her throat.

awoken

There is a right way to awaken.

Eyes closed, slumber’s reach still tugging at your edges. The slow awareness of your own body.

A subtlety of place, of fingers brushing hair from your eyes so that it settles on the pillow around you.

And then warmth of hands on your hips, felt through your shift. Fingers gathering the fabric along your hips, drawing it up from your calves, the bottom of your thighs.

A shiver, because the morning is cool and the air on bare skin is more then just the kiss of the world around you; it is a window of exposure, a moment of possibility. But the fingers pause with the shift mid-thigh.

Kiss, left at your pulse, a kiss that savors your own heat as a point of ingress. Nuzzling, nudging your head lightly to the side, teeth nip at your skin just sharp enough to make you gasp. And as your lips part, they are met, a kiss stolen in a most delightfully deceitful way.