"Jigsaw Puzzle Girl" Chapter 5: Touching

Chapter 5: Touching

They sat, side by side, watching the television until late into the night.  The wind shook the hotel from time to time and rain rattled against the windows.  Monica did not know when she fell asleep but thin gray light came through the windows when she woke, curled on her side with David spooned warmly up against her back.  His hand was resting lightly on her belly, gently holding her up against him and she could feel his breath on the back of her head, gently stirring her hair.  Monica felt a rush of emotion, happiness and gratitude to David for his patience, and to her relief a soft sensual enjoyment of the sensation of his body against hers.

She gently put her hand over his and pressed it down, and snuggled back against him more tightly.  Her night gown had bunched up around her hips in the night and she could feel the bulge of his erection against her bottom through her panties.  David tensed and tried to move back but she held tight to his hand.  His voice was strangled, “Monica…”

Her voice was soft and warm, “It’s okay.  It feels good.”  Gently she took his hand and began to rub it in slow circles on her belly.  “I like that.”  She sinuously ground her bottom against his heat.  “Don’t you like the way that feels?”

His voice was tense, “Yes, but…”

She twisted around in his arms and touched her fingers to his mouth.  “Shhh… I want to make you feel good.”  She pressed her lips against his neck, and then whispered, “Could you take off your undershirt and…?  I want to touch you.”  She slipped her hands down to toy with the elastic of his boxers.

He was tense under her hands, “Monica, Pretty Girl, are you sure?  You don’t have to.”

“But what if I want to?  I love you.  This part of making love does not scare me.  It would make me happy to know that I made you feel good.  This does not feel like rushing, it feels right.”  She slipped her hands up under his shirt and ran her fingers through the soft hair on his chest.  She murmured, “Oh good, I like men with hair on their chest.”  She pushed his shirt up and rubbed her cheek over the tickly hair on his chest. 

David chuckled, “Enjoy the chest hair, Pretty Girl; I seem to have a lot more there than on the top of my head.” 

Monica tugged impatiently at his shirt, “I like your bald head.”

David awkwardly pulled his shirt off and Monica pulled back and looked at his chest.  His brown face and arms contrasted sharply with his white chest.  He had a light sprinkling of hair across his upper chest and Monica noted that a few of the hairs were white.  He had broad shoulders and a flat hard stomach.  She curiously touched the hair, and then leaned down and kissed his shoulder.  She could feel that his body was tense and she smiled softly as a tiny quiver shook through him.

When her lips traced down and found one of his nipples and gently kissed, she felt his breathing stop for and instant and she looked up to meet his eyes watching her.  She lifted her lips from him and blew softly on the damp flesh, and smiled softly.  “Pretty good shape for an old man.”

David did not say anything but his hands gripped her and pulled her face up to his and this time when they kissed there was a gentle urgency to his lips, and when she opened her mouth to him, his tongue was quick to meet hers.  He lay on his side facing her, and her head lay on his outstretched arm.  His other hand was gently twined in her hair, trapping her face to his, as their tongues met and danced.  His skin felt hot under her hand and as she stroked the palm of her hand down the plane of his belly she could feel the ripple of his muscles as a tiny convulsion shook through him. 

Her eyes were closed and still locked in their kiss; Monica let her hand slip lower.  Keeping her hand outside the fabric of his boxers, she carefully, almost cautiously she traced the contour where his belly met his thigh.  David pulled his face from hers and whispered hoarsely.  “Pretty Girl, exactly how far is this going to go?”

A tiny wave of nervous reluctance flowed through her, making her body tense but she pushed back at it.  “Could you just let me touch you, with my hand?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“David, please, I want to.”

David reached down and pulled the blankets up over them up to their shoulders and looked into her eyes, and then nodded.  She could sense his uncertainty and shyness and somehow that made her feel bolder.  She reached down and traced the outline of his erection through his underwear, and then pressed against him with the palm of her hand, gently pressing his hardness back against his belly.  She looked at his face.  His eyes were closed but his eyebrows jerked and he inhaled sharply the air hissing across his teeth. 

Tentatively she worked her hand inside the waistband of his boxers and curiously touched the spongy tip and lightly explored.  She was pleased to find that he was circumcised.  It was hard to maneuver her hand and she tugged impatiently at the elastic of his last article of clothing.  He lifted his hips, letting her ease them down but did not reach to help.  When the underwear were down around his thighs he settled back down and lay on his back, his eyes shyly closed, one arm still holding her cradled against his chest. 

Monica lay her head down on his shoulder and gently ran her fingers over the length of him.  She let her fingers measure his length and then wrapped around his girth.  He felt big, bigger than she had experienced before.  She resisted the urge to push down the blanket and look, but she sensed he needed this little bit of privacy to feel comfortable enough to lay back and surrender to her caresses.  She smiled secretly to herself; there would be lots of opportunities to explore further.

As she gained confidence, she wrapped her fingers around him and began to rub up and down, her movements deliberate and rhythmic.  She could feel his body tense and trembling.  Her arm was starting to feel some fatigue, the muscles aching and beginning to burn, when David reached down and covered her fingers with his own, squeezing them a little tighter and urging them to a faster pace.  A little rush of exaltation shot through Monica when he tensed and she felt the spasms of his ejaculation pulse under her hand.  His body sagged and a slow deep exhalation accompanied his release. 

She pulled her tired arm up and wrapped it around him giving him a fierce, happy hug.  “Thank you for letting me do that.”

David tried to talk but coughed and had to clear his throat, “You took me by surprise there, Pretty Girl.  I was not expecting that.”  He began to contort a little and Monica realized he was using the sheet to wipe up and then he eased his underwear back up.

“Did you like that?”

He stilled and she could feel him searching for words.  “It felt nice.”  His voice was a little neutral. 

“You didn’t like it.”  It wasn’t a question.  A soft wave of confusion and disappointment flowed over her body, draining away the feeling of happiness.  She tried to slip from the bed, wanting nothing more than to flee this suddenly embarrassing situation.  “I’m sorry.” 

David caught her and pulled her back to face him.  His hands on her holding her were gentle but very strong.  “I did not say that.  It just surprised me and I guess I was a little embarrassed.”  When Monica tried to turn away, but he held her and whispered, “Pretty Girl, look at me.  Don’t pull away.  Please, listen.”

She looked up at him, her lips quivering.  His eyes were very serious.  His voice was soft, “Ready to listen?”  When her head nodded reluctantly, he pulled her to his chest and began to speak.  “This is going to be a long speech, better get comfortable.”

Monica snuggled up closer, hiding her face against his neck.  She nodded and mumbled, “Okay.”

“I have already told you that the only woman I have had sex with was my wife, Irene.  I said that we were pretty conservative sexually and that we did not often have sex and that toward the end of our marriage we did not have sex at all.”  Monica nodded against his chest.  “We were both raised with conservative, strong Christian beliefs, Irene especially.  I know that does not mean that we believed sex was bad but neither of us had much information.  We only had conventional, missionary intercourse.  We were both raised to see sexuality as just a means of procreation and I think that somehow both of us felt like anything,” he paused groping for words, “…anything, creative, was somehow perhaps sinful.” 

Monica inhaled wanting to interject, to protest, but before she could speak, his arm tightened, his words stopping her.  “Please, let me finish and then I will listen to you.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.  That was a long time ago.  After Irene and I grew apart, stopped being intimate, I started taking work assignments that kept me on the road a lot.  I learned a lot about the world but somehow had this opinion that the world was going to hell in a hand basket, that I was right and the rest of the world was somehow a decadent, sinful place.  I went through a lot of years feeling a lot holier than the rest of the people around me.”  His voice turned light and he drawled, “I had a hell of a big stick up my ass.”

Monica giggled.

“Then Irene got sick.  I came home to nurse her and be with her.  We may not have been close but, damn it, I still loved the hell out of her.  We had about a year together and toward the end there was no real reason to be stiff or shy.  Somehow having death sitting with you makes all that shallow stuff go away.  Irene told me how guilty she felt about never being ‘a good wife’ to me, and I realized that my thinking had probably been a way for me to deny my own needs and feelings.  Because the real truth was I did want to have sex, I had lustful thoughts all the time.  It was a very deep dark dirty secret of mine that I was the same sinful, decadent animal like all the rest of the world that I was so judgmental about.”

His arms held her tightly, preventing her from escaping as he said the next words.  “During that year, she was too sick to have intercourse.  But she offered to do what you just did.  I refused to let her touch me.  At the time I thought I was somehow being gentlemanly, gallant.  But now I know that I was denying her the chance to somehow show her love for me, to give me something.  It was only after she was gone that I realized I was being selfish, selfish and afraid.”

Monica was struggling in his arms, trying to talk, to apologize.  “David, oh my god, why didn’t you say something?  I wouldn’t…”

His fingers found her lips and covered her mouth.  He gently hushed her.  “I know now that making love is an important part of being in a marriage, that it is a way for people to show their love.  So when you asked if I liked it, I was still dealing with a lot of stuff, guilt about how I had refused Irene, shyness about my really wanting it, embarrassment about my body, and most of all difficulty admitting that I really liked it.  Hell yes I liked it.”

Again Monica tried to talk, “But…”   She tried to pull back, look in his face.

“Not yet.  I’m on a roll here.  I have just a few more things to get off my chest.”  When she had settled and her body softened against his once more, he continued, “So you see, I really don’t know anything about making love.  I think I only saw Irene without her clothing once in the whole time we were married.”  He paused and then took a deep breath; Monica could feel him strain to say the words, “So I don’t have a clue about how to be a good lover to you.”

He gave her a squeeze and then pulled her up to look in her face.  “And that’s about all of it.  Thank you for listening.  So, what was it you wanted to say?”

Monica sat there and stared into his eyes and blinked, suddenly and completely at a loss of words, “Um… um… I forgot.”  Then she began to giggle at the situation.  Impulsively she threw her arms around his neck and began to cover his face with little kisses, whispering, “I love you.  We will work it out.”

His arms gathered her up and gave her a fierce hug, and he murmured in her ear, “You are an amazing girl.  I am so lucky to have you.”  He chuckled a little, “You will have to teach me a lot.”

“As long as we keep talking and are honest, everything will be fine.  To be perfectly honest, I am not sure exactly how this patched together body is going to work anyway.  We will just have to figure that out together.”  Monica squirmed a little and began to untangle herself from his arms, “And right now this body is saying, must pee now!”