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.

because she asked

if you think you are as fragile as glass
remember this:

I’m not afraid of your sharp edges.
in fact –
each time you break, I will place your pieces in my pocket

and when all that is left
is sand
I will gather you in my hand and gently send you across the world

until you are a desert, and I a cool wind
and we can sleep beneath the stars

hubris

Let’s suppose someone has mastered the nuances of human behavior. They’ve spent the better part of four decades watching how people interact, studied their motivations in the face of ambition and desire, learned when instinct outweighs consciousness, examined the patterns that lead to heartbreak and betrayal. Let us say that at first this study was done to learn the art of seduction but later was simply a tool for living a better, happier, life.

Let’s suppose all of this is true.

There remains one other singular fact:

No matter how great their understanding, it is arrogance itself to believe they are not bound by the same motivations, same instincts, and same patterns.

And being arrogant is about as human as it gets.