This chapter last revised December 14, 2006.
The harvest moon had risen when Shinichi awoke. It was around 2:00 a.m. and the temperature in the bedroom had returned to normal. He pulled a blanket over both of them.
Leaning on one elbow, he looked down at his lover and wondered how the reality could be so much better than his month of fantasies. He brushed the hair from the side of her face. Even though she had been asleep for over two hours, her pale skin was still pink from earlier in the evening.
“I’ll always protect you,” he whispered.
As she lay with one arm outstretched, he noticed a bluish oval mark on her wrist. He put on his glasses and turned on the bedside light for a closer look, realizing that the mark was actually a bruise. He carefully lifted her arm, only to find more, smaller bruises.
The arm’s owner awoke. “What’s wrong? I didn’t wake you, did I?”
He shook his head and kissed the marks his fingers had left on her wrist. She inspected it, realized what he had found. “I wonder when those happened,” she said, with no anger in her voice.
“I … I think I know,” Shinichi said. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him. “I think I know too.” She closed her eyes and stretched like a sleepy cat before rolling over to face him. “I didn’t feel a thing - at least not anything like you hurting me. Quite the opposite, you may have noticed.”
Before they had returned home from the park, he had planned to make love to her in a way that would prove the depth of his feelings, without concern for his own pleasure. He imagined caressing the tender nape of her neck, massaging her bare shoulders before exploring her with his fingers and tongue.
Eventually he realized that Melina had reacted to his confession at the park in several ways. One result was an increased emotional bravery. Although still presenting her sex to him in a submissive fashion, she was no longer too intimidated to look him in the eye or voice her emotions. It was if she had lost any residual fear of intimacy.
Eventually she ended up under Shinichi, her arms above her as she held onto the headboard to steady herself. Her auburn hair had spread itself in waves across the white linen sheets as he drove himself into her. She had looked up at him, whispered that she would always be his, nobody else’s. His reaction had been to reach for her wrists, holding her down while he forcefully sealed the bargain, his eyes burning into her own.
******************
Earlier in the afternoon, they had stayed at the park for another half-hour, kissing madly like teenagers when they had the park to themselves and talking about their discovery of each other when not alone. Although he was elated that he was not alone in love, Shinichi eventually felt compelled to ask how her interest in him had evolved.
“At first I liked your hands, then your eyes,” she began. “After that, it took me a while to get used to the idea that you could actually be a boyfriend candidate.”
She explained that ever since her arrival in Japan, she had been so busy and stressed that romance had never entered her mind. Plus, she believed that that office affairs were equivalent to career suicide.
But her explanation still wasn’t enough. He had always wondered what had tipped the situation in his favor. Why had she eventually trusted him enough to accept his invitation to his home?
She was silent for a few seconds.
“It was after we’d played cards for a while,” she said. “It was kind of a test, and you passed.”
“How did I pass if I didn’t win?”
She explained that she felt that a person’s true character surfaced during competition. It didn’t really matter what type of game they played; his reactions to winning or losing would have been equally indicative of his inner self if they were playing golf or Monopoly.
“If you had lost your temper because you were losing at cards, I would have stayed on the train,” she admitted. “The way I see it, anyone who gets angry over a meaningless game is not going to cope well when a real problem shows up. And they always do, sooner or later.”
He thought about her hypothesis. She had a point.
“It’s just as well I didn’t catch you cheating, my love,” he said.
She looked up, wary; he kissed her to show he was kidding.
“Listen, my firefly. By the time we were playing cards, I would have let you take all my money, even if I’d known you were cheating. And I would have thanked you for spending the time with me.”
She blushed pink, trying to hide her face between her hands. It was the first time he’d seen her blush; something he looked forward to causing again, although he expected it would be a challenge.
They stopped at the nearby sushi bar for an early dinner, both knowing that dinner would most probably be forgotten once they returned to the house. They said little as they ate, trying not to look publicly love-struck. Shinichi found himself feeding Melina when nobody was looking. Simply watching her open her mouth to take the sushi from his fingers was, in itself, an erotic sight.
Once back at the house, Melina had gone to hang up her new clothes before joining Shinichi in the kitchen for tea. They had stood in the kitchen for several minutes, talking about future weekends together, before Melina realized that neither of them had turned on the burner.
Tea was never served.
When they had first returned to the house, Shinichi had hurriedly turned the central heat up above the normal setting so Melina wouldn’t be cold. Not realizing that he had set the thermostat well into the 80s, the bedroom had quickly turned into a near-tropical environment. But neither cared; instead, it intensified their desire as if they were in a private jungle.
Melina found herself mapping the outlines of his heavily muscled worker’s physique, committing them to memory. The sweat brought the symmetry of his tanned shoulders and chest into glazed relief as she rode him slowly and deliberately, their fingers interlaced as he guided her.
A damp sheen had appeared on her own body, her hair in wet strands on her forehead. Shinichi could faintly smell her wetness as it gradually spread to her inner thighs.
He lifted her off his drenched cock and turned her on her back. He leaned over, licked a single drop of sweat off each nipple before slowly running his mouth down the length of her belly. She felt his mustache brush against her clit as he tasted her gently at first, then deeply, luxuriating in her clean salty taste.
He spread her thighs wide, carefully slid his tongue just inside her for a few seconds. He felt her fingers lightly touching his hair as he slowly traced upwards, savoring her wetness, and found the tiny, delicate mound waiting.
Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 8:34PM